The Indie Side #4 – Phil Hester

I’m extremely lucky to have met Phil Hester when I did. I’d started my first gig as a comics critic and columnist for the fine folk over at BrokenFrontier.com (who still have my old review columns up, if you’re interested). While seeking out cool and under appreciated indie books, I stumbled upon one called The Coffin. I was in love. Even more so when I found out that the creators had a second book called Deep Sleeper starting up soon. Whoever this Phil Hester was, I was a fan. Then I read The Wretch. I fell in love. Oh, and then I realized that I’d be reading Phil’s work for years as a huge fan of his distinctive, expressionistic artwork. I wrote about him at length.

Memory tells me that I got a thank you e-mail. Knowing the man as well as I do now tells me probably so. He’s got to be the kindest, most thoughtful genius I’ve ever met. And, I mean that. The genius part. Over the nearly eight years that I’ve known Phil, I’ve watched his writing grow and twist and expand not just in terms of style and content, but in genres that I never would’ve imagined he’d tackle, let alone kick the living shit out of with awesomeness.

When I think about the writer’s job in comics I see it as a mixture of disciplines. We right the panel descriptions and ‘direct’ the visuals to instill poetry into a simple piece of progressive motion. Then, you become dramaturg and have to dialogue and caption that stuff in order to convey anything that the art may not be able to. So, in my head, I worry about the lyricisim of the layouts first, and then the rhythm and content of the text.

Phil doesn’t have to do that. He has so much faith in his artists and the scripts that he produces, that the lyricism follows through. Every single word in a Phil Hester script, and everything single inch of ink in a finished book is there on purpose. And what a purpose.

Take for example, the beautiful new hardcover release of Deep Sleeper from Desperado/IDW. Never once in the book do Hester or artist Mike Huddleston stop to hold your hand and explain what you’re reading. No, instead, they tell the story of a man realizing that not only is he an exceptional astral projector, but that his dream life has real, unimaginably awful consequences on his waking life. We learn the rules, the players, and the characters through action and through some of the smartest semiotical storytelling in the world.

These are men confident in not just their own skills, but in those of their readers. There’s no slouching and no playing it broad and loose for the sake of the folks in the peanut gallery. Instead, you get a brilliantly crafted, pulse pounding thrill ride that’s as beautiful as it is upsetting. If you somehow missed it upon it’s first release, you owe it to yourself to find the hardcover immediately.

But, please, don’t stop there. The funny, charming, and bad-ass action-ing good times of Firebreather await, as do the redneck high jinx of Golly, the gothic horror of The Coffin, the Hellboy meets Thor and go to hell adventures of The Anchor, and the absurdist super-hero by way of the Twilight Zone fun of The Wretch all await you.

Now, as I have him in my iPhone Favorites, I had no choice but to bare my soul and pay my respect to the man himself.
 

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Joshua Hale Fialkov: You've been doing this a long time, in fact, your work inspired me to jump headlong into this silly business of ours. What would you say is the biggest change between when you were starting out and now?

Phil Hester: Are you trying to pin your life choices on me, Fialkov? I can't be held liable for the karmic catastrophe your life is collapsing into.

I suppose the biggest change, and the most confounding, is the counterintuitive surge in comics fan culture coupled with the undeniable decline in comic book sales. Millions of people call themselves comic book fans, but only a few hundred thousand actually purchase comics. The reaction of the Big 2 to this state of the market is also one of the major changes I've observed. When I started out, books selling under 100K at Marvel were being cancelled. Hell, I did an indie title that sold 28K and was summarily axed. Due to reduced overhead and production costs, Marvel and DC have learned to make money in low sales territory (6-20K) they used to leave to the indies. They're dominating the market like never before. So, bottom line, it's harder out there for an independent comic book.

JHF: You've collaborated with Mike several times now, and I think it's brought out some of the best of both of you. Is there something in particular his work inspires in you?

PH: He draws things from the inside out. That is, he starts with depicting whatever inner life force or soul the characters have and finding a way to carry those forms, rhythms, and gestures through to their physical appearance. Each face, clothing choice, or lighting choice, reflects some inner truth about the character. I don't believe in physiognomy in real life, but Mike has a way of using it in fiction to reveal larger, usually unseen truths about the characters, their actions, or the theme of the story. It becomes alchemy. Mike thinks about the story as much as I do.

Also, he draws really, really well.

JHF: This is something you and I have talked about a lot in the past. If I could both write and draw and was even half as talented as you were, I'd be alone in a room doing my own thing. What keeps you from going Akira Kurosawa and doing it all yourself?

PH: There are two answers, one crass and one deep, both true, I think. For the most part, I don't think I'm the right kind of artist for the books I write. That is, I objectively wouldn't cast myself as the artist. I think I've been right in nearly every case. Looking back on it, I couldn't picture anyone but Andy Kuhn drawing Firebreather, Huddleston drawing Deep Sleeper, Brian Churilla drawing The Anchor, etc. I've tried to be an honest director casting myself as an actor. If I'm not right for the part, I'm not cast.

The second, crass rationale is economic. Anyone who knows me knows I have very low regard for my own work, but it has worked out, after twenty years of drawing comics, that my page rate for pencils is pretty high. I also have two kids and need to earn. I sort of can't afford myself as an artist. That is, I can pencil a mini series for a big publisher and make 25K. I can't make that kind of money drawing my own books, but I can use that money to survive while I write my own books. So, I guess it's like taking summer movie acting gigs so I can afford to direct my indie films, to torture the analogy even more.

I hope 2011 is the year this changes, and I can get back to drawing and writing the same feature. I know what the book is, I'm just not sure there's a publisher out there willing to take a chance on it. One way or another, you'll see it soon. 

 

 JHF: Your words of kindness and advice were indispensable to me when I was starting out. I now force you to bestow that knowledge on the world.

PH: Gosh, here comes the choke. I think the most important thing a new comic book writer or artist can know is: Don't wait for permission. If you want to make comics, make them. If you want to be a cartoonist, the only path to that gig is being one. The minute you punch that keyboard or ink that panel border, you are there. It's tough, and you'll suffer a lot at the beginning, but you'll be a cartoonist from day one. Mini comic, Big 2, Image, webstrip, it doesn't matter. Just go.

JHF: What I've admired most in your work is how you use the visuals to tell your story, and the words to add the poetry, which instinctively to me seems almost… backwards, and yet, it just kills for you. Is that what you're actually trying to do?

Thanks, Josh. I see everything I write a long time before I write it, even if I'm not drawing it. Everything I write has a visual life first because that's simply how I think. Roughly 80% of my process is devoted to visualization… simply daydreaming. Once I get the images floating around in my head, the dam bursts and I can start writing to support the visuals. It certainly isn't the only way to write, but this is comics. The visuals should carry as much of the narrative as possible. I'm just lucky that my natural storytelling instincts– or more likely the ones grown in me by reading comics– are primarily visual.

JHF: And finally, can you talk a bit about your writing process? And yes, I mean the annotated layouts (assuming you still do that.)

PH: Well, like I mentioned in the previous answer, I just daydream a lot, or sometimes I'll even try to have an actual dream about the story. Once I get a nice visual hook, I begin writing a stream of consciousness dialogue string. Again, the visuals are already flickering on this film screen in my head, so I'm essentially writing a soundtrack to go with it. I don't worry about stage directions or camera angles, just dialogue. I'll then print out the rough dialogue and start doodling on the printed play, matching images with story beats. If that works, I'll go back and tighten dialogue, break the doodles down into pages, and draw thumbnails of each page. I'll synch balloon placements and dialogue on the thumbnails before moving to pencils. I only do this on a few projects these days, mostly The Darkness and some indie gigs. When I write full script (DC style), instead of the thumbnail stage, I go back and write detailed panel descriptions. That said, MY thumbnails are always alive in my head, so when I get finished art back, it can sometimes be disorienting.

I should say, on Firebreather we actually work Marvel style. I give Andy that stream of consciousness dialogue and a paragraph breakdown for each page and let him go. I come back in and synch things up with the finished art afterwards. I wouldn't advise this approach unless you are very, very close with your artist and trust him or her implicitly.

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Joshua Hale Fialkov is the Eisner, Harvey, and Emmy Award nominated writer and co-creator of the comic ELK’S RUN, TUMOR, ECHOES, and PUNKS THE COMIC. He highly recommends that you pre-order your comics, unless you are just happy being the problem and not part of the solution. You can find more about him at www.thefialkov.com.

 

Check out his series Echoes, on Graphicly TODAY! Issue #3 is free!