MT Interview: Stephen Geigen-Miller and Patrick Heinicke
by Shaenon
Stephen Geigen-Miller is the co-creator (with Greg Beettam) of the quirky sci-fi adventure Xeno’s Arrow, available on Modern Tales Longplay (go read it now!). Now he and artist Patrick Heinicke are launching a new series on Modern Tales, Cold Iron Badge, which combines fairy-tale fantasy with police procedural. Stephen and Patrick were kind enough to let me talk to them about their new comic, which starts Monday on MT.
Shaenon Garrity: Stephen, tell us a little about Cold Iron Badge. What’s the premise of this comic?
Stephen Geigen-Miller: Cold Iron Badge is set in a world that’s a lot like our own–except that in the not-too-distant past, magic returned in a very dramatic and abrupt way, when the gates to Fairyland swung open. Now there are portals to a parallel, magical Earth all over the place, including in the middle of major cities. Someone has to guard that border and keep the peace between the two worlds. That’s the job of the officers of the Borderland Guard, who carry the eponymous badge.
Our story begins when Christine McCall, an officer in the Borderland Guard, has to investigate a terrible, brutal crime that has its roots deep in Fairyland.
SG: The tone of Cold Iron Badge is very different from your previous comic on MT, Xeno’s Arrow. Did you want to do something that was more like a mystery or police procedural?
SGM: Yes, definitely. I love police procedurals. They’re full of built-in drama that everyone understands and can relate to. I liked the idea of using that to provide a basis for the action that also grounds the fantastical elements of the story in reality.
The tone of the story–the fact that Cold Iron Badge is set in a tarnished, dangerous, morally ambiguous world–wasn’t so much a deliberate choice at first, as it was a natural result of the subject matter. But I’m really happy with the direction the story took us–I like stretching my writing muscles!
SG: Patrick, how did you and Stephen hook up on this project? What made you decide to draw it?
Patrick Heinicke: It was more good timing than anything else. I have flirted with the idea of making a comic, on and off, for a long time, but I have never had the gumption to sit down and do it. I dabbled a bit, but never seriously enough to follow through on. One day when I happened to be in the mood to try again, Stephen mentioned in passing that he had been to a comics con and wanted to get back to writing comics. We had talked about collaborating on a project in the past and it seemed like a good time to do it. We had no ideas for a story, or even a genre at that point. We just thought it would be cool to finally work on something together.
SGM: Yes, it was the 2007 TCAF. I loved going, and it was great to get caught up with some of my friends in comics. But it made me very, very hungry to be working on something new. Patrick and I have been friends since 1980, by the way, and we’ve been talking off and on for years about working together on a comic. This was a case of, finally, us both being in the right headspace at the right time and, after kicking some ideas around, with a story we’re both jazzed about.
SG: Patrick, you’re an an animator and animation teacher as well as a cartoonist. How does animation affect your cartooning work?
PH: The hardest thing for me in drawing comics is knowing what to draw. I tend to visualize what I read as moving pictures. Especially action sequences. The challenge for me is to isolate the single moment that captures the action in the comic panel. As far as design style goes, having to draw between twelve and twenty-four drawings per second when animating has given me a great appreciation for simplicity. And a habit of focussing on outlines. One thing I am pushing myself to do with the comic is to take the time to add a little more detail and texture to the drawings than I would for animation.
SG: Visually and story-wise, how do you make fairy-tale elements work in a modern police setting?
PH: The interaction between fairyland and our world is an uncomfortable one. The story is about the men and women who patrol the border, and their job is not easy. The fairy characters do stick out like sore thumbs because they are so different. They stand out like any foreigner who is unfamiliar with the customs and waysof a different land. And of course the fairies are touched by magic in various ways so strange and unpredicable things can happen.
SG: Stephen, I notice a lot of references to fantasy literature in your scripts, such as a drug called Pixie Dust and a character named De Lint. What are your main influences as a fantasy writer?
SGM: Steven Brust, especially his Vlad Taltos books, is a big one. He mixes together genres and puts ordinary–or, at least, low-fantasy–people in situations where they have to confront high-fantasy problems. Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon both, in very different ways, do something similar, juxtaposing the human and the fantastical. Charles De Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay and Tanya Huff do that too, and also put it on the streets of Canadian cities, which of course resonated with me.
SG: Patrick, what are your influences as a fantasy artist?
PH: Finally an easy question! One of the earliest an biggest influences on my drawing is Appleseed, by Masamune Shiro. That was the comic that got me interested in comics in the first place. That and Hayao Miazaki’s Nausicaa. Miazaki is a brilliant storyteller and Nausicaa has so much heart to it it’s fantastic. I love the artwork in Bone. I think it’s a shame that it’s being colourized. The simplicity of the black and white is really elegant. A huge influence on me stylistically is the work of Mike West, one of the most versatile designers I know. I worked closely with Mike, teaching, for years. I also like Galaxion, by Tara Tallan. Her characters are really expressive and I learned a lot about drawing hair from looking at her work. And then there’s David Mack. I don’t think I will ever be in the same league as him but every time I reread Kabuki, I just want to make comics.
SG: How long a work will Cold Iron Badge be?
PH: As long as it takes to tell the story well. How long is that? Good question. I orginially expected to end up with about 100 to 120 pages. But Stephen’s chapters seem to be getting longer and longer as we go. So for now I say I HOPE the story will be between 120 and 150 pages but I’ve only seen the first half of the script finished. So we will have wait and see.
SGM: Yes, to quote some other fantasy author, the tale grew in the telling. Not to mention that I’ve been remembering that action can take up a lot more room on the page than it does in the script. Turns out, “Our heroes fight the demon banana. At first it looks bad, but then they win,” actually takes more than a page of finished comics.
I expect that the story will still come in at around 150 pages. We’ve also talked about two subsequent volumes. They’ll run closer to the original plan–100 to 120 pages each–because I’ll have a better understanding of how my script interacts with Patrick’s art, and also because we’ll already have the characters and premise established. You, uh, are still up for doing the sequels, right Patrick?
SG: Are you working on any other projects right now?
PH: I have a couple of short films in post-production. I can do just about everything on a cartoon by myself, except sound. I don’t have the expertise or the equipment for that. So I have two films with finished artwork and no sound. I hope to get that finished someday but for now, CIB is my main concern (and it doesn’t require a soundtrack!).
SGM: Greg Beettam and I will be re-launching the Xeno’s Arrow website in August! It will coincide with the move to Xeno’s Arrow Book 2 on Modern Tales. The new website will include a blog as well as new and old ancilliary material, like the Appendices and other fun stuff from our days in print.
SG: Any final thoughts?
PH: So far, making Cold Iron Badge has been an exciting experience. I have always enjoyed Stephen’s writing, and having a chance to put his words into pictures has been fun. It’s been a great opportunity to stretch myself as an artist and storyteller. I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed making it.
SGM: Yes. I’m having a great time, and I’m getting such a rush from the immediacy of webcomics. After noodling around in the world of screenplays–with no success, I should add–it’s wonderful to see something I’ve written get put in front of an audience so quickly, so smoothly, and so perfectly matching how I originally envisioned it.
