Fractal Matter

I spoke to Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman about is debut comics work, the state of the media and graphic design. He’s a pleasant, easygoing guy who loves to talk and has a relaxed authority that immediately puts you at ease, even when discussing the big issues of the day. I found him intelligent, interesting and humble about his work, and enjoyed talking to him immensely.

JH: Hey, what’s up buddy?

FM: Hey how are you?

JH: Doing well.

FM: Excellent. So, what are you up to at the moment?

JH: Actually I just finished issue 5 of The Nightly News, and sent that off to press. This week and part of next week I’m putting together all of my proposals to go out for new series. I’ve got four that are going out and they’re all Image books. Two of them I’m writing and drawing, two others I’m just writing.

FM: Can you tell us about the artists on those two?

JH: Well, the guys I’m working with, one is a French guy that lives in china, that I found on the Internet, and he’s pretty good. That book is actually a kind of ‘mockumentary’ in the vein of Christopher Guests work Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, kind of thing. This other book I’m doing is a big me-doing-super-heroes story, mash ‘em up apocalypse kind of deal. But it’s also a narrative on man. You know the way I kind of throw stuff in from a bunch of directions. The guy I’m working with on that is actually a really, really talented guy who won the Marvel try-out challenge thing one year. He kind of got out of comics and is looking to get back in. kind of a Frank Quitely on a more testosterone kinda style. Really, really clean lines, like Frank. More heroic in his poses though.

FM: They sound quite different to the The Nightly News?

JH: Yeah. Both are radical departures. The two books that I’m writing and drawing are more in the vein of the way that The Nightly News is constructed. One is a story about the long view of humanity- “What kind of atrocities do you find acceptable if your view is of the long term histories and evolution of man.” If your goal is not on individual care, if your goal is not on the kind of 21st Century thinking where we see a story about a poor little baby and our hearts break and have a massive reaction to it. The people who are immune to that and are only concerned with the growth of humanity as a species. The kind of things that you would tolerate if that kind of person appeared in a roman/imperial time. Of course if you took a 21st Century man and put him back in Imperial time, the first thing that you would be upset about is that Women are treated terribly and you can’t believe there are slaves and stuff like that. But the person with the long view will say that slavery is acceptable, if it means that we have a working sewer system and that we eradicate disease. Does that make sense?

FM: Yeah, totally.

JH: That’s the first book that I’m doing. Something kinda likes that. The other book that I’m doing is a kinda space opera science fiction thing. It’s really a rehashing of the history of philosophy in western society. Its one of those stories where you take an existing genre that people already have suppositions about and throw in this kinda thing: philosophy and explore that against the background of something that’s ‘normal’, something that people already have an accepted idea about. Then twist it and make it interesting.

FM: Any idea when they’re going to be published? Or which one you’re going to be working on first?

JH: I’m not sure, that’s why I’m getting the proposals together so that Image and I can sit down and plan out my schedule for the next year. I don’t know which of those four books will come out when, but all of them will come out in the next year. Or at least be out. They might not be finished…

FM: So I guess your experience with Image has been a positive one? Especially judging from the success of the The Nightly News?

JH: I’m very grateful because they gave me my first opportunity to put myself in print. You know, comics is something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, and I’m very grateful that Image gave me chance and it’s also true that Image is one of the only two places I send my stuff into because I want to maintain ownership of everything that I create. You know? I’m certainly not above working for Marvel or DC, as a mater of fact I’m getting ready to do some stuff with Marvel, but if I create something I want to retain control.

So Image is great. They’re pretty much one of the only places where you can really do that. They may be -I don’t want to speak out of school because I’m not sure what other companies do- but I know that’s primarily one of the awesome things about Image. I wish that they had a bigger market share, I wish that things weren’t as dominated by Marvel and DC, but you know it is what it is and if I had to chose between lower sales but total autonomy, I’m going to take that every time. And Image has been really happy with the work that I’ve done. They want my sales to be higher than what they are, but it’s one of those things where- it’s my first book, nobody knew who I was and orders weren’t going to be really high anyway to start off with.

FM: They do seem to have really embraced the whole ‘creator-ownership’ thing, I mean I know that was one of their mission statements from the start but recently with books like The Nightly News & The Walking Dead they seem to be really pushing the boundary of what they’re producing.

JH: Yeah man, I think they’re putting out some of the best books in comics. If you look at fell, if you look at Casanova, there’s so much that’s come out over just the past year, and they’ve got more stuff in the works that’s getting ready to come out. I think that they’re really making a concentrated effort to make their company even more worthwhile than it has been. I applaud ‘em for that. I’m proud to be published there.

FM: When creating the The Nightly News, do you have any specific equipment you prefer to use? Coming from Graphic design, how has your toolkit developed as you’ve progressed with the series?

JH: I’m primarily a Photoshop guy, an Illustrator guy. Both those Adobe programs. I use Indesign to put everything together, you can pretty much do everything you want to do with those three programs. I do mess around with some 3d animation programs. I am messing around with doing some flash/algorhythm-generated backgrounds- but that’s for later stuff. I use the same tools that everybody else uses; I just think I’m trying to do some different stuff.

FM: Do you find that you kind of sketch things down in pencil first or do you just go straight to digital?

JH: Well, with the The Nightly News, I drew everything with a brush and a nib, I inked it and I scanned it in and I manipulated everything from there. The next project that I’m doing though, instead of creating elements and putting it into the computer and massaging everything, and it all being layered, and that layer being digital; I’m actually for my next project painting a lot of it and I’m going to have digital stuff behind it in the background, the painted stuff will be the middle ground and it’ll have digital stuff in the foreground. It’s going to be really different. A lot more different that the The Nightly News. But equally as different from stuff that’s being published right now.

FM: I wanted to talk about the fan reaction to the The Nightly News. How it it’s been incredibly positive even from its initial solicitation in Previews magazine, did you expect that level of support from such an early stage? Especially with the The Nightly News being your debut work?

JH: Er. No. I knew I would get a reaction, I don’t think I made a book that you could pick up and read and say “Meh”. You know, I had no feeling whatsoever about the book. I don’t think that I was creating something that people would be ambivalent about. But, I figured that the reaction would be equally positive and negative, I thought I would hear a lot of “Ego driven, pretentious, didactic preaching garbage,” I thought that I’d get a lot of complaints about the colour palette, I thought that I would get a lot of complaints about not using word balloons, I thought I’d get complaints about not using comic book fonts, you know? I thought I’d get complaints about the content, most of all. But I probably got two or three bad reviews, I’ve gotten less than ten negative emails, everything else has been really, really positive. I’ve done a ton of free press that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had done the average standard book. I’ve been blown away by the response. I think the comic book community wants progressive books that are trying to do different things. I’m really, really pleased with how the community seemed to embrace it and I thinks it is just a kind of thing where they’re hungry for more, and I hope I can provide that.

FM: I think so. We were talking about other Image books and I have to say that The Nightly News, Phonogram and Fell are some of top selling comics to people who aren’t traditional comic book fans- perhaps passers-by who see something different, that stands out from the crowd. I think that’s an interesting thing to look at, as they’re three very different books, but they seem to resonate with people who aren’t the, er, ‘spandex brigade’.

JH: Yeah I guess, not your typical readership or whatever. You know when Image actually first said, “We’re going to publish your book”, I asked you know, “What should I expect. What kind of sales should I expect- what are you guys thinking? I don’t want to fail, tell me what my parameters are for not being a failure.” and Eric Stephenson, the managing director/executive director/editor guy said he thought I’d do average, or mediocre to average numbers. But he thought that the trade would do very well, and I think that’s kinda what we’re trending towards- I think its the kind of book that graphic designers would be interested in picking up. Just to see what you can do in comics. We’re talking about how were going to present the graphic novel, and stuff like that. We’re talking about doing an annotated version, and we’re talking about doing a different type of printing on it, with a different type of paper, a different type of cover that you would typically see on a graphic novel. I hope that plays out. So we’ll see.

FM: I think that could really set it further apart, much like when Douglas Coupland first produced Generation X, he specifically chose the size and colour of the book to literally stand out on the shelf- The Nightly News, which has similar themes in places, appeals to that kind of reader, who wants something ‘different’. In a very visual and literal sense.

JH: Yeah, well that’s the hope. We’ll see how it goes. I’m pretty anxious about it. I don’t think that initial orders are going to surge, but I think that once people actually see the presentations, once they see the book it’ll really take off.

FM: I hope so! One thing I was going to talk about is the thing that immediately sets The Nightly News apart once you open it is the fact that there are no adverts throughout. Is that something that you had to push through yourself or is that something that was discussed early on?

JH: That’s an Image thing. Image lets you dictate whatever you want inside the book. The only reason that there are ads in the The Nightly News is that I don’t have 28 pages of content. That’s one of the kick ass things about Image, I dictate the entire placement for everything it’s really nice. In the 6th issue of The Nightly News, when it comes out, the back of the book- the last 4 pages- are going to be my own adverts for my upcoming work. That’s a really cool thing that they let you do that, but a lot of that is that Image doesn’t have any kind of corporate advertising deal. I think they may have done one or two things, but in general they don’t have a deal with Snickers or Honda like Marvel or DC does. I can’t imagine -though I guess I will in the future- what that’s like, I would image that makes writing really difficult. You’ve got beats that you have coming up that you want to hit, you know “Damn it, I’ve got to have an ad on page ten!” that’s probably a whole different set of complications that guys that do a lot of mainstream work have to deal with that I can’t even put my finger on right now.

FM: You’ve mentioned in the past loving the work of Paul Pope, Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Ware. But also that it was graphic designers that influenced you most. Are there any specific designers, which influenced you style and placement of iconography within a page?

JH: A lot of the stuff that I’m doing visually is kind of graphic design that’s really mainstream, that’s really in the mainstream culture and readily recognisable. Its not really cutting edge/bleeding edge kind of stuff. And I’m going to get into that when I have a little more reader support. It’s still got to be a comic book right? You don’t want people to freak out when they pick it up and not even recognise it as a sequential narrative. You know, comics and flowery prose. But, I would say that guys that really influenced me (and you’ll probably start seeing more if their stuff in my work- I’d like to not do that, but you cant ever eradicate all of your influences and do something completely original) Joshua Davies. He’s huge here in the states. Actually he’s huge all over he place. He’s amazing; he does all this algorhythm-based design- I was thinking about taking a class he teaches in Colorado in the summer. Mike Cina, Mike Young two guys that are really, really amazing, I’ve always loved their work. And I can’t pronounce any of their names, but there’s like ten guys from Scandinavia that are amazing. They absolutely blow your mind.

I’ve actually purchased and I’m actually using in some places in The Nightly News some really nice, specially made clip art stuff from time to time and the guy that made that, his Web site is hydro74. His name is Josh and he’s really, really amazing. And then there’s a bunch of websites I go and look at and it seems like lately all the people that are doing kick ass work are 16, 17, 18 year olds that have cracked copies of 3studio max, and cracked copies of Photoshop and are just doing their own thing. It’s a pretty amazing time to be a graphic designer.

FM: Were you a comic fan growing up? Or did you discover them later?

JH: I’ve always been a comic fan, my dad and his dad used to collect them it’s kind of always been a family thing. They got passed down and I always spent all my spare allowance money on comics. Back then I was totally into the stories of course, but I was really hot on Neal Adams and John Byrne and people like that who were tearing it up in their day.

FM: Talking about the stories and the writing, obviously The Nightly News is your debut in comics- but the writing is really tight and coherent- how did you develop your ideas for both the story and the characters? And how did you decide to mix that with the iconography that you employ?

JH: Well, I don’t really have a problem with coming up with the plot of a story, I’m one of those guys that has like, three or four of those ideas every day you know “this would be cool”, “this would be a cool situation to put in a book”. I’ve always got my little pad with me and I’m always scribbling down stuff that I come up with- I just don’t have a hard time coming up with a tight narrative for a story. And you know, I’m thirty-five years old- I’ve been wanting to do comics since I graduated from college at twenty, I was pretty serious and I tried to do it then. But obviously I didn’t get in and I went into advertising and all that kind of stuff. I’ve got a backlog of material that I’ve just been working on for fifteen years really. I just don’t have a problem with narrative. The stuff that really fleshes all that out, I’ve found (and I never had any of this until I actually got a publishing contract) is when I actually started researching the kind of stuff that I was going to put into my story, and I was blown away by how much that really fleshes out a story. When you actually know forwards and backwards everything that’s going on, in journalism in the last 15, 20, 30 years, when you know the history of the NY Times and you know which corporations own which companies and all that; when you actually know all that stuff, you can just speak with so much more authority about it and you can tell a story just so much sharper than you could if you were just making it all up out of whole cloth.

And in preparing for other books that I have coming up, I have found that research is really an energy boost for a project kinda like a fuel cell for an automobile. Dialogue though is, a lot of that is pop culture that I’ve seen and if you’re listening you kinda get to know what kind of language works. Also I read an article somewhere, I can’t remember where it was but I’m thinking it was Garth Ennis that said that he talks out all of his dialogue, I’m not sure if that’s right, but it was some phenomenally good writer in comics that said that if you actually read out your dialogue (not acting it out, but just reading it aloud) you get to know that it sounds real, and doesn’t just read well- which is something different. If you read it enough times and read it aloud enough times you get a kind of sense where it works well both ways, and that’s just how to make sharp dialogue. That’s just fucking working on it, you know? Never doing it before, but knowing that that’s how it’s done, and just working really hard at coming up with something really good and probably the other thing is that I’ve waited so long to do comics that there’s absolutely no fucking way I’m going to put shit out. You know? There’s just no way I’m going to say, “Well, that’s good enough, I’ll get it better next month”. I’m just not going to do that. And I’m kind of a perfectionist anyway when it comes to that, so immediately as soon as something’s finished I look at it and see thousands of little things I wish I had done differently. I start to loathe, when I’m finished and that’s what’s good about a monthly deadline- it’s just got to go out at some point. But you know, actually giving a shit about what you’re doing is the primary fact even more so than having any innate talent and creating something decent.

FM: I was going to say actually, considering the sheer amount of information that you pack into every page; it does surprise me that you manage to keep to a monthly schedule. When there are so many delays for other comics, I never expected The Nightly News, looking the way it does, to ship on time every month.

JH: It’s a shitload of work, no doubt about that. But because I’m doing everything, and because it’s a singular kind of vision, I am able to create shortcuts for myself. And I am writing for myself to draw, so I’m doing layouts then and I am taking shortcuts. I don’t want to pretend that this is the most creative book out there, because it certainly isn’t, but I’m turning around an issue about every four-and-a-half weeks, so I’m shipping about a week late. But I think that’s pretty damn good, considering that I’m a one-man shop, and this is the first book that I’ve done. And I’ve stuck to pretty much a monthly schedule, I feel pretty good about it. The really good thing about it is that I’ve figured out even more things to do to speed up the process and to streamline stuff even more. So I think that I can actually get faster. But I don’t know that I’m going to continue to draw everything, because I’ve got so many things I want to do, at some point it would be great if I had four books coming out a month, and I was writing them all, now there’s probably going to be a piece of me that loathes some of the artwork on it because it isn’t what I would do, but part of that’s just being a professional and you’ve got to let it go. I’m pretty proud of the schedule that I’ve kept.

Virgin comics just asked me to do a series of five covers for them, the I’ve got a little story for Marvel coming out that I’m going to do. At some point the economics of this thing factors in. I set myself up so that I knew that when I got my publishing contract it was going to be virtually impossible for me to make money the first year, so I have a business plan that operates against that and I don’t really need to make any money the first year. But it looks like I’m going to, so that’s more good news! But at some point there are economic decisions that are going to come into focus, and its a tough decision to make because on one hand I could write and own more properties than I’m going to share ownership with an artist or colourist or whoever the fucking team is that you have to put together- an army of people apparently that it takes to put out a monthly book. I mean, where else right? So I’m loath to share ownership of anything I do with anyone, I mean that’s just me being a selfish, protective creator. On the other hand it would be great to not just be grinding it out every month too. I’ve got so many ideas I want to do, there’s a reality that I just won’t be able to get them all done if I’m just doing them by myself, right? So there’s got to be a happy medium somewhere, I don’t know what it’s going to be, all I know is that I’ve got my work for the next year set up and I’ve got a hectic fucking schedule and I’m probably going to just run myself ragged, but I’m just so excited about getting a lot of my work out there. I feel twenty! Because of the cool stuff I’ve got coming out and all the good work I’ve got to do, but at the end of the day I’ve got to remember that I’m thirty five, and the reality is that I’ve got 15 years probably to crank out the best work of my life. I just think there are going to be some hard decisions in there, trying to figure out how to accomplish that.

FM: I understand you’ve been involved on the promotional circuit, how have you found it going to Conventions as a Professional?

JH: I went to my first convention as a Pro, I went to New York a couple of weeks ago (New York ComiCon), and it was interesting, you know? Signing books for people is an interesting thing. Some guy came up and he was nervous to meet me, and I thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever. I was like, “Dude, you know, six months ago I was …you! Don’t worry about it.” But that’s another thing, the whole promotional aspect. Because I’m at Image, they don’t have a marketing department- they have like one PR guy, juggling twenty, thirty books a month. He’s just one guy, there’s no way he’s going to be able to pay great attention to each individual book. Not like Marvel or DC where they’ve got a whole Marketing Department- you’ve got to do a lot of work yourself. But it’s also kind of cool, because you’re the only person that speaks for your book. There’s no mixed messages or anything like that.
I’m doing San Diego and I’m doing Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. I’m doing three this year; I’ve got too much work to do to do any more.

FM: Obviously the The Nightly News is almost totally about the media portrayal of events and the way individuals deal with that, was there any specific media even that made you think “I’ve got to write this book?” Or was it just an overload of constant manipulation by the News networks and the papers?

JH: Yeah, I think looking back on it, it was more of a zeitgeist thing, it was just time, you know? Something like that. I think that’s one of the reasons that it’s had the response that it has. Some people might be put off by the violence, or appalled by the cultic pseudo-religious overtones, but everybody can kind of relate to wanting to throw some shit at the TV. I would say that the stuff that has happened in the news, since the book came out, has only reaffirmed that it was a good idea to do it.

FM: Obviously in the UK we have a slightly different news aesthetic. I mean we get like CNN and BBC news 24 on digital, but a lot of the news we get just seems mundane in comparison to the news that America is constantly bombarded with.

JH: Well you guys actually have an actual self-identified right and left press, right? We don’t have that and it’s one of the most insulting, demeaning aspects of the press in the US. We’re supposed to buy into this horseshit, this lie of impartiality. There isn’t a single person that I’ve met that is impartial about life, and the events of life, you know: everyday events, world events and drugs and murder and abortion, religion. No body is impartial on all of those things. And it’s just one of those insulting things about the American Media. The saddest thing about my fellow countrymen is that a vast number of them actually buy it. But it’s actually dying, one of the good things that’s going on in America is people loathe Rupert Murdoch, but actually I’m secretly, in the dead of the night, really stoked about Fox News because it’s taking all the horse-shit off the mainstream news, you know “We’re a right-wing News Network and we’re telling different news”. I don’t agree with it very often, but I’m stoked that we’re maybe moving away from monolithic journalism and this country is moving into more of a right and left model, where they can scream back and forth at each other and at least be a little bit more honest about who they are.

FM: Every character you write seems to be a mix of confused contradictions and questionable morality; do you think that’s an accurate depiction of who you were trying to get across?

JH: Well, the story is intentionally structured so that here aren’t any good guys. Don’t get me wrong, some of these people were good people at one point in time, but because of the world that they live in they’re no longer that. They are certainly characters that you’re supposed to identify with, obviously. But I’m not saying that all people that get reported on the news are victims and they have a right to act out, and I’m not saying that all journalists are bad people but what I’m saying is that that person that goes to journalism school, that thinks that they’re going to save the world, the real world of journalism eats that person up very quickly. And they should, because they’re naive children- that’s the way of the world, you know? But specifically about the characters in the The Nightly News, it’s intentional that you shouldn’t look at anyone and say, “that’s the do-gooder”.

FM: I think that’s another reason why the book has become so popular, it’s because the characters seem to be people who have fallen on hard times either morally or literally, and that that could happen to anyone.

JH: Sure, you know, fates a kind of a bitch. Anyone can have his or her life ripped up at any point in time. The crazy thing about the media is that you never know what they’re going to latch onto as a story and you never know what’s going to catch fire and explode and become a big story. It’s not just that fate is cruel; it’s also the climate for punishment in society is kinda cruel too. My mother is a go-between, between insurance companies and lawyers, concerning people that have been in accidents and gotten hurt, they share the company and that’s all that they do. But one of her clients was a guy that got banged up in a car wreck, he was a drunk driver and he hit and killed somebody. And where I live, they had just passed a law that it was going to be a felony- Murder One (First Degree Murder for us Brits), with no plea down or anything like that. Now I don’t really have a problem with anything like hat, but there was no available plea bargain for this guy; he was the wrong drunk driver at the wrong time. And he got the full weight of the new law; he was made an example of. You don’t have any control over when circumstances are going to just pick you out of a crowd and when life’s going to have its way with you. I tried to convey a little bit of that in the book.

FM: I can see that coming through actually, especially with the main guy. He’s gone through some troublesome times.

JH: True, yeah. He’s kind of screwed.

FM: I‘ve just flicked through issue five that you kindly sent me- though I didn’t want to spoil it as it’s out soon. I’m right in thinking it’s a six issue series?

JH: Yeah, the next issue is that last one. Issue five should be out in about three weeks (at the time of interview, it’s actually on sale this coming week!).

FM: Any plans to re-visit these characters in a bout ten years time, assuming any survive, to see how they’ve progressed?

JH: Well, I don’t want to spoil the ending of the book for you, but the book ends in such a manner that it’s kind of a reveal and you find out who the voice is and what happens to all of the characters for the most part and all that kind of stuff. It’s not a happy ending with a bow on it but there is a resolution.

FM: I think there can be too much going back to old work and trying to re-invigorate it and success, when a clear and concise narrative can often stand the test of time better than along running series.

JH: I hope so; I mean I hope I don’t completely and utterly hate it. I hope that looking back I have affection toward it. I just know that I’m going to get so much better over the next couple of years. I can see all of the little mistakes I’m making and how I can make them better and I’m thinking about my next books and what’s coming out and how to actually structure a story better, how to set up some dialogue better, how to generate more rhythm and things like that. I’m hoping that I’ll look back on it fondly.

I’ve actually gotten as much email from the UK as have from American readers, which I though was pretty interesting I don’t know if that has something to do with the sensibility of the book or whatever, but I actually have no idea why that is.

FM: It seems to me that we as a culture (the British) particularly like it when Americans analyze their own culture because that’s kind of introspective for you over there, but it’s an outsider thing for us. And I guess we just like the voyeuristic aspect of that. And not that you’re emulating a British writer, but it does often read like a British view of America, kind of like Warren Ellis’ dark views of society.

JH: Yeah, Warrens got a great viewpoint about America, he cracks me up. He’s one of my favourite writers and he does amazing work, and I’m a pretty big fan. I’d say my favourite guy from Britain is probably Grant Morrison though, you know The Filth is my favourite book. I actually didn’t get it when it came out, I had quit collecting comics when it came out, for about eight years, and I didn’t get any. So, when I was finally able to decide “You know, being in advertising is sucking the life out of me and I am pouring out any talent that I have”, that realisation at thirty that you’ve had the wrong fucking career. I had to go back and pick up in trades all of this stuff that had come out. For example, I was able to go back and pick up all of The Authority and Global frequency and Planetary that Warren Ellis had done, and Transmet too. When I quit reading comics, Warren Ellis was writing Excalibur, I picked up The Filth and, God it just blew me away. I so identified with throwing fifty different things in the pot and seeing what the soup is like. Does that make sense? The casserole approach to making comics that Morrison does sometimes? And though I can identify with that, he’s fabulous and I’ve got five issues of comics out, you know? But I feel really strongly about throwing in as much material- don’t fuck up the book, don’t ruin the narrative, don’t kill the story, but touch on as many wonderful little, beautiful ideas in a book that you can. When I read The Filth, it kind of crystallized every single idea that I had about comics and I read that and I thought “I can fucking do this”. Not as good obviously, but this is the kind of comic that I want to make. It is a pretty amazing book, I love Grant Morrison.

FM: Ok, that’s about all we’ve got time for, so thank you very much for taking time out to talk to us and good luck for the future.

JH: That’s cool, I love talking about my work and I just don’t understand people that don’t. It’s all press right? I’ve got some of my submission work up on the-engine.net too; it’s some stuff that’s going to be coming out soon.

FM: Cool. Thanks again!