Matt Fraction is a busy, busy guy. In addition to working as a graphic designer at MK12, he writes for and about comic books. His work includes ‘The Annotated Mantooth!’, ‘Last of the Independents’, and the upcoming ‘The Five Fists of Science’. His scripts have also appeared in ‘X-Men Unlimited’, ‘Four Letter Worlds’, and ’30 Days of Night’. Mr. Fraction spoke to us about comics, writing, the collaborative process and Nikola Tesla.
JAKE Magazine: Since you work in the graphic design business, it is right to assume that that's put you in touch with a lot of artists? How important is it to have an artist attached to a project if you're trying to pitch it to a publisher? Or should you have a finished product to present?
Matt Fraction: It has, but I've only worked with one from the other once, if that makes sense. Timmy Fisher, who's a partner at the company I work at, did the tones on THE ANNOTATED MANTOOTH! but other than that... I tend to try and keep those two aspects of my professional and creative life separate.
I think having an artist can help or hurt, depending. I don't know that ultimately you needneedneed one to get a pitch taken seriously; really, I'd say if you're cold pitching to try and do it without an artist. Unless that artist is well-established already.
I've never pitched with a finished product, so I don't feel qualified to answer that one-- it seems like an awfully big risk, you know? then again you hear stories like the PISTOLWHIP boys just showing up with a finished graphic novel out of nowhere and it being picked up on the spot.
I think the long story short is, honestly, there's no One True Method. You take you chances any way you go, and someone can sell a series from a half-thought out idea typed on a single sheet of paper just as easily as someone can sell an idea by presenting a publisher with a finished graphic novel. And a million times more often than that, it's gonna all get ignored.
Work hard and work smart, that's the first definite; the second is keep trying. Meet people online or in the real world at conventions, foster relationships and try not to be a pain in the ass. Everything else is just guessing, maybe.
JM: Why don't you illustrate your own comics? Or are they simply a separate medium from what you work in?
MF: Time and skill. I went to art school but made a conscious choice to focus on writing rather than visual work; as such, I am Not So Good At The Drawing Anymore.
JM: Was "Mantooth!" the first comic you set out to publish? What was the process of getting that in print like?
MF: I was approached on MANTOOTH! actually, by your pal and mine Larry Young. I had just left the a web zine on comics called SAVANT that I was writing for and, long story short, he hooked me up with the gig.
The process was a strange, weird, and ultimately magical one. I was working with Andy Kuhn who did this just amazingly great work. I was totally blessed to have been hooked up with such a great talent my first time at bat-- he made the book ten times funnier, ten times better, and ten times more readable than it deserved to be.
That said, the process is literally magical. You have these dumb ideas and you write them down, and then, a couple weeks later, someone has drawn them, and given them life on the page and injected them with all these things you never thought possible. You hold it and roll it up and read it and reread it and its a thought that's been transformed into matter-- there's nothing else like it. To this day, I love seeing pages for the first time-- I've loved the work that's been done by all of my collaborators to date and there's nothing like seeing the pages you wrote and how some genius artist interpreted them visually.
JM: Is SAVANT still available online? Your conversations with Joe Casey in "The Basement Tapes" get pretty in-depth sometimes about events in the industry. How long have you been following the business of comics, and what brought about that interest?
MF: Lemme check...
Yeah, appears so. (SAVANT)
I suppose I started really trying to follow and understand the business (TRYING, anyway) when I started working for the original Retail Superman, Mr. H. Shelton Drum of Heroes Aren't Hard to Find in Charlotte, North Carolina. And once I started trying to earnestly enter the field, it just made sense to stay abreast of what was going down. Plumbers read Plumbing Contractor Monthly, I'm sure Candy Men read This Week in Candy Artisan Retailing... I read the internet.
JM: You've posted excerpts from scripts online, as well as the scripts published in "The Annotated Mantooth!". In the case of the latter, there were times when the final product deviated quite a bit from the original, and other times when it seemed to follow very closely. What is the collaboration process like? Do you hand an artist a final draft, or do you ask for feedback and do a rewrite before turning it over?
MF: Oh, pity Andy and the absurd shit I was demanding of him. People have thought I was trying to take shots at him in the annotations, but, really, I was taking shots at myself-- he elevated that book with a light hand and designer's eye and was able to hone in on these beautiful little moments of pure cartooning that made it a worthwhile thing to read, for what it was... it was, after all, my first comic scripts and i was quite an insufferable little prick. So that collaboration taught me an awful lot, least of all about collaboration itself.
My relationships have varied as my process has varied-- I still don't feel like I know quite exactly how I write. Each book has had a different system. I usually turn a draft in, get the art back, and if there's any time, I'll make little nitpick changes. That, in the broadest and most generic of strokes, tends to be how it works.
JM: Do you have any plans to write outside of comics? A script for a movie, maybe, or television series?
"Plans" implies some s? concrete set of steps being followed actively-- which is a level of pre-planning far above me. I'm noodling around with a book and a screenplay, but really only when I can't think of anything else to write; I'd love to take a crack at a television series. Then again, I'd love to live on the moon, too.
JM: "The Five Fists of Science" will becoming out this summer, so is there anything you could say about the piece for someone unfamiliar with your work?
MF: Late July-August is our, uh, street date, as it stands. Just in time for San Diego, where myself and Mr. Steven Sanders, my erstwhile cohort, will be gleefully handselling the book to each and every person we possibly can.
The short story: FIVE FISTS is me and Sanders' stab at doing 100% Fun in full color. It's a big, sprawling action comic that, we hope, infuses the 'widescreen' era of comics with a sense of wonder and awe and spectacle. It's the absolutely true almost story of how Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla teamed up to save the world.
Long story: THE FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE is, as I said, the absolutely true almost story about Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla teaming up to save the world. See, Twain, having been self-exiled to Europe in a state of financial embarrassment, became interested in the Armistice movement born out of the early days of The Hague. He was known throughout Europe as "Our Famous Guest," and travelled around as The American, really; he was beloved, admired, hounded by the press-- Twain was the first celebrity, in a way. Or maybe the first rock star. And he wanted to bring about world peace.
Tesla, coincidentally, had mentioned to his friend in passing that he'd invented a weapon so terrible it would end all wars, but he couldn't interest a buyer. He was young, he was single, he was incredibly handsome, and he was a fabulously rich scientist, one of New York City's most notorious bachelors. And yet, he had, in the time leading up to our story, invented radio-controlled torpedoes and god only knows what else, when he came to become fascinated with an earthquake ray, wireless electricity, and... giant war automatons.
Twain, ever the brilliant showman, came to the idea of "Peace By Compulsion"-- meaning that if all the nations of the world possessed one of these terrible weapons--whatever it was-- then war would simply cease as no one would be mad enough to end the world.
Twain's idea-- Tesla would build the Doomsday device, Twain would sell it, and together they'd bring about world peace.
So that's the true part; it's at this point in our tale, slight and subtle liberties with historical events, characters both real and imagined, scenarios, settings, dialogue and dialects, motivations, and narrative arc, as well as with the general mise en scene have been taken for certain dramatic effect. It's a big, sprawling adventure comic that's a sorta-steampunk folksy AKIRA-style apocalypse romp, and the kind of comic that comics were made for. Also: the Yeti shows up.
--Matt Fraction can also be found at his blog, and in his regular CBR column "The Basement Tapes."