Wonder of Comics: Interview with June 2009 Zuda Contestant, The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank

» Posted by GusHiguera on Jun 10, 2009 in Wonder of Comics | 0 comments

My series of interviews for the June 2009 Zuda contest continues with an interview with Bill Williams and Thom Zahler, creators The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank. This entry is particularly noteworthy for it’s minimalistic use of panels and the fact that it’s a self-contained complete eight page story with a beginning, middle and end. I talked with Bill and Thom about their entry, their choice for the format and the American Dream.

1) Tell us a little bit about yourself and your comic The Urban  Adventures of Melvin Blank. How did the project come about?

Bill Williams: I’ve been making comics for over ten years now and publishing things under the Lone Star Press banner.  Making a few bucks by making comics is harder than ever, so I have been trying new things like making webcomics.  My SideChicks strip has been my focus for the last couple of years where I write, (occasionally) ink and (sometimes) color the thing.While looking for more work as a freelancer, I drifted into a writing group with a few friends.  Clockwork Storybook is made up of Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges, Chris Roberson, Mark Finn and me.  We get together and hammer the best work out of each other.  Anyway, someone in the group was asked for a pitch by a major publisher and we slaved away at that thing as a group project.  The publisher was fine with the group concept and a couple of us are still trying to crack that market and get steady work.  We got a solid pitch together and got back notes and then tightened it up a bit and sent it back in where it was dropped.  That’s life as a freelancer.  But we did a load of work for free and I decided that if I was going to do another pitch, I’d try to get paid something for the work done.  So, it’s a bit mercenary, but I wanted to get paid a few bucks for my part in the pitch process which is kind of how I look at the Zuda Deal.  Ironically, I’ll probably spend more on advertising the strip than what I made for the project to date.When it comes to story, I wanted to do something narrated by a character with a different point of view.  Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a terrific example of this.  So, I wrote the script and called Thom.

Thom Zahler: Bill and I had been working together on lettering SideChicks and some other design projects. When he called about working on Melvin, I was thrilled to be able to work with him from the ground up on a project. Not that lettering isn’t collaborative, but this is certainly our closest collaboration.Also, I was familiar with Zuda and was looking to pitch something myself. I wasn’t able to lock in a concept I liked enough. Bill came with one fully-formed, so it was a match made in heaven.Most of my recent projects, including Love and Capes, have been ones where I wrote and drew the whole project. It was nice to be called upon to fill the art duties and be able to concentrate exclusively on that.

2) Give us your pitch, can you briefly summarize the concept behind   the story for people not familiar with your comic?

Bill Williams: Here is the pitch for the strip from the competition page–  “With the mind of a child and the strength of a brute, Melvin Blank chases the American Dream in the heart of a big decaying city. In between shifts as a dishwasher, he has his urban adventures.”That was the heart of the pitch when I sent the script over to Thom.  After he read the script, Thom still had a few questions so on the phone, I came up with some shorthand for the strip.  It is the ongoing adventures of Lenny from Of Mice and Men.  And then Thom said, “click.”  As to art style, that’s all Thom.

Thom Zahler: I’ve been messing around in a more cartoony style, and when Bill sent his pitch, I didn’t see how they’d mesh. But when he mentioned Lenny from one of my favorite books of all-time, it all made sense. Lenny’s a cartoon of sorts, and has I believe been the inspiration for some Warner Brothers cartoon (“I will love him and pet him and name him George”). Plus, I think the cartoony vibe gets across the seeming innocence of Melvin and how he views the world. When you see a cartoon go dark, it leaves you wondering what will happen next, since it plays against expectations.I also picked up on Bill’s mention of the city being “decaying”. I wanted to do something that didn’t look just like Love and Capes, so I muted the color palette and have all the inked holding lines print in a sepia. It gives it a sun-bleached desolate look that hopefully gets across Bill’s vision.

3) Your entry is a complete eight screen story that has a beginning,  middle and end. What made you choose this format?

Bill Williams: God help me, but I’m a bit of a contrarian and when I looked at the Zuda strips, I saw a few common threads.  A load of them were the first sixteenth of the first chapter of the war epic to end all epics.  And that kind of work is easy.  No writer has a problem droning on and on and chewing up the dead tree real estate.  A classic example is the writer who has his characters spend a chapter having lunch or trying on hats.  While you can use those chapters to unload Chekov’s gun cabinet, the heavy lifting of writing is shortening a story.  Telling a story in sixteen panels is much much harder with every line of dialogue and pacing decision being more important.Plus, I had a mercenary reason for working like that.  In the Zuda contract, it states that there is an additional payment if the story is included in an anthology.  I figured a complete story would have a better chance than a fraction of a story and I think that art should go off in odd directions.  In terms of style, having a cartoonist like Thom draw the thing gives it an added dimension that I enjoy.

Thom Zahler: Obviously, this is all Bill since he came up with the original idea of Melvin, but I agree with him completely. There are a lot of billion-issue magnum opuses out there, and they’re a bit of a commitment. Comics seem to borrow a lot from TV these days, and I’d like to see them borrow that idea of telling an accessible story with a beginning, middle and end. Sure, you might lose some of the nuances coming in on a middle episode of Buffy or Grey’s Anatomy or Burn Notice, but they all catch you up right quick.Plus, Bill’s written a story that, while complete, screams out to continue. It’s a great “best of both worlds” approach.

4) Where did the character of Melvin come from? Was it hard to tell  the story from Melvin’s simplistic viewpoint?

Bill Williams: I tended bar an a variety of places, so I have spent time with a broad spectrum of people from the restaurant business and Melvin is a bit of a composite.  I have this odd fascination and affection for dumb characters whether it is Woody from Cheers or Joey from Friends.  At the time, I had just watched The Wire and some All in the Family, so I had urban decay in the back of my mind.  I considered what it would be like to be the last man standing as the world kind of fell apart around you.  This first story is a brick falling from that tumbling wall as Melvin has the problems of the outside world literally end up on his doorstep.

Thom Zahler: Visually, I wanted big and dumb. So, he comes across as a pudgy guy, but there’s some structure and muscle there. And his face is so expressive that I can go from the innocent expression and body language to something a lot more terrifying. Bill called for the character to be hidden for most of the story, so it took a lot of staging to keep him in shadow or cut off and make it feel “natural”. Hopefully, as you read it, you’re trying to turn your head a little more to catch a better glimpse of Melvin.

5) In your synopsis for the comic you say “Melvin is absolutely sure  that he is living the American Dream and he wants to share it with the  rest of the people in his neighborhood”;  What is the American Dream  to you and how is it similar to Melvin’s?

Bill Williams: Well the American Dream has classically been defined around the drive to be a home owner and by that definition, Melvin is living that dream.  His parents are deceased and like any kid he inherited things from them when they passed.  I think that my American Dream is closer to the modern definition that falls under the umbrella of ‘success.’  I think the prior dreams had their roots in ‘success’ but the shorthand of the age called it homestead or home ownership.  A feeling of security comes from having some place that some rich powerful person cannot kick you off of.

Thom Zahler: The American Dream? Wasn’t that a run on Shade the Changing Man? Bill’s answered Melvin’s vision better than I could have, so I’ll just take the second part. Mine comes down to the pursuit of happiness. I quit my day job in late 2001 and went completely freelance and never looked back. To succeed on my own terms, have the kind of life I want and get that by doing the thing I want, that’s my dream, and thankfully, my reality, too.

For more information about The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank visit Zuda.com