I have taught a Humanities course in college, I love Myth, and was presented with an opportunity to interview artist and publisher Scott Bieser and writer Steven Grant about their work ODYSSEUS THE REBEL, to be published first on the web by Big Head Press and thereafter in hard copy.
Thanks to both gents for their answers and time.
The classic story of Odysseus represents a journey, and lessons in morals. How does your work do this?
Steven Grant: I ended up playing awfully fast and loose with the book. But this story goes back to my college days when I had to deconstruct the Odyssey and other Greek myths for a literature class. I initially baffled my professor by coming up with an unheard of interpretation of The Oresteia, which is really the story of how the rule of absolute law - and, by extension, the rule of the gods - is undermined and the potential for corruption is introduced, because by the end malleable, corruptible human law - not to mention lawyers - becomes the new standard of human existence and the once terrifying Eumenides - the inescapable justice - become basically the fat and toothless house pets of the legal system. It is the story of the ultimate triumph of corruption. Likewise the classic Odyssey is the story of a great man's victory through surrender to the Gods, which is really what passes for the "morals" you speak of. My version is the tale of a man who refuses to surrender, with great consequences for the world.
When working on classic/mythic material how do you approach the story telling? Do you write dialogue to move the story or to accurately represent a discussion? Do you draw and paint iconic figures to exemplify the story's grandeur or do you use a style to allow the humanity pour through?
Scott Bieser: The script Steven gives me is primarily dialog, with a minimal amount of what might be called "stage direction." So I suppose you could regard the story as being primarily dialog-driven. My work involves developing page breakdowns that work with the story beats as well as working out panel layouts that convey the story and offer suitable eye-flow across the pages.
Steven has given me a very long leash on this project, which I find both exciting and just a little bit frightening.
As far as the drawing, I am experimenting with a simplified style that focuses as much as possible on the characters, and how they react to the situations they face. My teen-aged son tells me I'm drawing in a "fusion" style and it's true that some of this is borrowed from the manga idiom.
SG: I'm not exactly sure what you mean. That's not an either-or question. I use dialogue for whatever I need it for at the time. There are plenty of discussions in the series, but as far as I can tell they're all in character, and everything moves the story. Really, when writing I don't view things on that level of compartmentalization. My two main jobs in writing are to tell the story - and plot, character, theme, etc., it's all story - and to not bore myself. When I get bored with what I'm writing it's a hint that I should be changing things up a little.
Does the current state (depressing as it is) of cultural literacy allow you to retell myth because it is likely nobody is familiar with the info as they once might have been?
SB: This story is written with an assumption that the reader has a basic familiarity with the original stories. The ODYSSEY has become stuff of popular fiction in our culture, to some extent, so I don't think there will be much in the way of head-scratching.
SG: I don't know about that. I don't know how many people would've been familiar with Odysseus 100 years ago. I don't think anything "allows" us as writers to do anything. We just do it.
Which, now I think I think about it, is what Odysseus the Rebel is about.
Does working such a story for the web as opposed to physical/ hardcopy change how you tell your story? How do people relate to reading from a screen versus a paper text?
SB: ODYSSEUS THE REBEL is written and drawn more with the eventual printed book in mind, than as a "web-comic" per se. I think the screen versus paper thing is more generational than absolute. Younger people are more accepting of reading on a screen, and once e-book readers can get their price points down to the cost of a typical mobile phone I think there will be a huge move towards more reading on screens.
The bigger issue with serializing a graphic novel on the web, versus in pamphlets the way Vertigo does it, is frequency. Vertigo releases 22-24 pages of story at a time in pamphlets, once a month or sometimes once every other month. The comics-reading culture accepts that. But the web-comics culture generally does not. They want their entertainment in daily doses or at the very least, weekly doses.
This strongly inconveniences long-form stories, which usually require 3-6 pages just to provide what someone has called a "satisfying chunk" of story. But no artist can produce 3-6 pages daily and very few can produce more than 3-4 pages per week on a regular basis, working solo anyway. Even penciller-inker teams have a tough time doing more than 6 pages per week, and you need Big Two-scale financing to afford penciller-inker teams. All of us doing long-form on the web have been experimenting with various solutions to this, but I don't know anyone who has found the magic formula yet.
SG: I haven't the vaguest idea. I just write the story. But, no, it doesn't much change how I write the story, except that I worry less about length.
How is this telling of the story different from the classic/ mythic?
SB: Steven might answer this better, but... our version of this story contains moral lessons but some of those lessons are a bit different from the original, which was largely about keeping in good graces of the gods. Most importantly, I think, is that decisions have consequences and that the things that happen to us are the consequences of our own decisions, and not simply the random or capricious whims of forces beyond our reach.
SG: Perspective, mainly. The Odyssey is broken into "real" events and "myth" events. Some of the myth events we hold onto, like Circe's Island and his journey to Hell, and some we write off as stories being told around because Odysseus is a subject of gossip and tall tales during the years he's gone, since no one knows what happened to him. Since no one has any information about his true status, but he's a major star due to the whole Trojan Horse thing (real event, in terms of the story) they make up stuff to fill the gap. He's the Lindsay Lohan of his day. And, like I said, he's in some ways a radically different character from the one portrayed in the Odysseus, and in some ways not, because we approach the Odyssey not as history but as pop biography, an organized collection of all the stories being passed around. That gives our story a lot of leeway.
What about Odysseus's tale made you wish to reenter the telling?
SB: Steven can talk about why he wanted to re-tell the Odyssey. Personally I just saw a chance to work with Steven and took it.
SG:: I always liked the character, and it's a pivotal moment in Greek myth. The Odyssey is the last Greek myth. They don't come up with any more after that. Something changes due to the Odyssey, something about their relationship with the Gods. This is the story of that.
When finished how soon after might we see a tpb?
SB: Generally we need five months between finishing a GN and selling it in the Diamond channel. If I can keep to my production schedule I'll have the art finished next February, March at the latest. So we could release a tbp the month after the serialization wraps at the end of July 2009, but we may wait until the holiday buying season.
Should this succeed what else might you approach in the area of mythic tales?
SB: Big Head Press would certainly be open to doing more projects with Steven, regardless of the genre. As an artist, I intend to go more into science-fiction. I'm already committed to drawing a space-pirates GN with L. Neil Smith next year, and I have a space-opera story of my own on the back burner. We'll see.
SG: I don't know that I'm especially driven to make a career out of mythic tales. My own background is comparative mythology, which makes me more inclined to deconstruct myths than repeat them or dress them up in new clothes. I wouldn't mind maybe doing some Celtic myth, but I'd probably be more inclined to concoct original sword and sorcery stories - that's what we call myth today - than to start doing a lot of myth-based projects. I'm more interested in what underlies myth than in myth itself.
Why have comics moved to the web? If comics are failing in general what business model exists to make money from them on the web?
SB: I don't think comics are "failing" but I think current ways of doing comics are running out of steam. We can see this in the way the Big Two are flailing about with their massive "event" and crossover comics. The Direct Market which saved comics in the 1980s when newsstand distribution collapsed has become a shrinking ghetto which the industry needs to grow out of, somehow. The success of manga in "regular" bookstores and the move of many comics to the web are solutions-in-the-making, but I think things are in transition right now and it's impossible to predict how things will be 10 years from now.
So far the only business model for web-comics which has had any sustained success is free display with advertising-plus-merchandising. Merchandising in this case usually means t-shirts and printed collections of the comics. People are very reluctant to subscribe for web-content, unless it's high-value business information or pornography. I know someone who is developing a pay-to-display model, but I haven't seen it in action yet.
SG: Comics have moved to the web because publishing online is much cheaper than publishing a comic books. As for business models, that's more in Scott and Frank's arena.
For Scott: Does Big Head Press accept pitches for new works from unpublished creative talents? How might they approach you in the event you do?
SB: We usually only do two projects per year, mainly because we pay modest advances to creators and our pockets are only so deep. When we have a need for a new project we'll announce it on Panel&Pixel and The Comics Journal message board as well as our own news page. We'll accept pitches from unpublished talents but they'll be judged by the same standards as pitches from seasoned pros. So far, unless you count the two colorists we've used, every creator we've published has been published previously, although not necessarily in comics.
For Steven: Where do you see comics as a medium in ten years?
SG: The story of the last 15 years has been the slow shift of the comics industry from a magazine-based to a book-based economy. I don't see that slowing down or reversing, just due to sheer economics. I'd guess, all other things being equal, that we'll stop seeing comic book publication on a lot of stories and original graphic novels will become a lot more economically feasible. But we're likely to see considerable economic upheaval and shift in the business in the meantime. But it'll be fun.
PRESS RELEASE
ODYSSEUS THE REBEL, Steven Grant's take on the classic Odyssey story,
will launch its serialization on the Big Head Press website August 4,
the company announced.
The story will launch with the first 13 completed pages on that day, and
then the story will update with a new page each the following Wednesday
and Friday, continuing a Monday-Wednesday-Friday update schedule until
it is completed in July 2009.
"I've completed the first 65 pages of the 156-page story already, so keeping up with the schedule should be fairly easy," said Scott Bieser, who is illustrating the story.
Grant's version of Odysseus' voyage home from the Trojan war is a departure from the theme of the original story. Rather than simply being a luckless minor king who was batted about by feckless gods, Grant's Odysseus is a visionary rebel who challenges the gods' supremacy, standing up to these powerful beings to demand that he, and men generally, be free of supernatural interference, whether hostile or friendly.
"This is a hero the gods are determined to break, to prove forever that even the greatest of men is less than nothing to the smallest of gods, but he is a hero who will not be broken, even when his goal is snatched right out of his grasp, when the men under his command are butchered and crushed around him, when his comrades-in-arms are made to share his punishments only because they fought alongside him, when he is even cast down to hell," as Grant outlines the story.
Bieser will be drawing the story in a different style than what those familiar with his work are accustomed to. "The artwork will be black and white, with grey tones in a mostly cell-shaded style," Bieser explained. "The line work is streamlined, stylized and borrows a bit from the manga idiom, although a better term for it might be 'fusion style,'" he added.
"My goal is to create a more energetic style which will evoke the highly intense, driven personality of Odysseus," he said.
Grant has many credits in the comics-writing field but perhaps is best known for his work on Marvel Comics' PUNISHER miniseries of the mid-1980s (collected under the title CIRCLE OF BLOOD). Other Marvel credits include THE INCREDIBLE HULK, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, and THE AVENGERS. He also scripted BADLANDS and COMICS X for Dark Horse, two CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION miniseries for IDW, and numerous DC Comics titles.
He currently pens "Permanent Damage," a weekly column commenting on the comics industry for the Comic Book Resources Web-zine.
Bieser first entered the comics industry as a penciler and cover colorist for Malibu Graphics' various imprints in the 1980s, drawing THE ROVERS, GAMBIT, and guest-penciling one issue of DINOSAURS FOR HIRE, as well as the first computer-drawn "adult" comic, CYBER-LUST.
He left comics for a career in the computer games industry but returned in 2002 to draw A DRUG WAR CAROL as a commissioned web-comic, which was later published in print form by Big Head Press. Subsequent works include THE PROBABILITY BROACH: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, written by L. Neil Smith, and ROSWELL, TEXAS, written by Smith with Rex F. "Baloo" May.
The URL for the serialization is BigHeadPress.Com/otr. Presently the site only has placeholder material, until the August 4 launch.
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