Microreview [book]: Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick

Douglas Hulick, Among Thieves [Roc, 2011]

It's no coincidence that (epic) fantasy fiction--along with the other legatees of the 19th century Romantic movement, horror, romance and, to a limited degree, science fiction--emerged in the context of late capitalism and its fellow traveler, scientific rationalism. After all, these forces were among the primary contributors to what social theorist Max Weber called "the disenchantment of the world," the slow retreat of myth and superstition as building blocks of reality. Many aspects of that disenchantment have been positive for human development, but Weber reminds us that other aspects are not. After all, 99% of human history has been decidedly enchanted, and the loss of that can lead to feelings of alienation, atomization and other negative things.

Fantasy fiction, then, serves as a sort of escape from the world of cold, hard facts, and provides a tether to what's missing from our 1% of human history. When we travel to fantasy worlds, we are traveling to places and times where the barriers between the physical and metaphysical have evaporated. And when it works, fantasy fiction gives us an infusion of enchantment to get us through our disenchanted lives. Whether they realize it or not, this is probably why most fantasy readers read fantasy.

There are, of course, many flavors of fantasy, and we aficionados inevitably have our favorite corners and niches. One of mine has, since childhood, been what you might call the "thieves, rogues and assassins" style, where where stories are set, for the most part, urban rat mazes of the pre-modern underworld and where protagonists succeed as much by luck and wits as by sword or sorcery. As an adult, I've made a few forays back into this soup, hoping to rekindle the magic I felt as a youngin' reading Fritz Leiber's classic Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser stories or the latest entry in the collaborative Thieves World series. I have been mostly disappointed.

So when Douglas Hulick's novel Among Thieves was recommended to me, I was naturally curious to see if I'd finally found the "thieves, rogues and assassins" book I've been looking for. In truth, things didn't start out well for me--the opening scene is a graphic, cruel and very long torture scene. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how I feel about this kind of thing: only if it's necessary and only if it does something very important for the story that can't be achieved through less gratuitous means. The bad news is that this torture scene is not and does not. The good news is that it's also completely unrepresentative of the book as a whole. And though there is plenty more violence, from this point forward it feels well considered, restrained and integral to the story--which, I might add, is a hell of a story.

Among Thieves follows the exploits of Drothe, a resident of the Imperial capital of Ildrecca and a member of that city's extensive organized crime world, known as the Kin. Drothe works as a nose, someone who traffics in information. He ostensibly works for crime boss Nicco, but...well...I'll let you find that out for yourself. Suffice to say that Drothe's loyalties are opaque, and things are further complicated by the tidy little side business he runs in Imperial relics. Thankfully he has his good friend Bronze Degan, a member of an ancient order of warriors, to bail him out when things get too hot. But when a relic dealer double-crosses him, Drothe stumbles upon an elaborate and mysterious conspiracy that threatens to envelope them both, and everyone and everything Drothe cares about too...

At its heart, Among Thieves is a thriller, and the first-person narrative (centered on a stubborn protagonist with an unusually strong sense of ethics as he navigates a dangerous and duplicitous world) feels more typical of crime fiction than fantasy. And that's a good thing: the first mark of good crime fiction is a steady pace, and the limits of first-person are well-suited to the building of tension. Of course, it helps that Drothe is likable, relatable and, best of all, believable. He's no ace, but he has a certain something that keeps him alive and confounds those who think he can be manipulated or brushed aside. A lot of credit for that goes to the people he surrounds himself with--best friend and fencing master Bronze Degan, sister and Baroness Christiana Sephada, bodyguard Fowler Jess, the Djanese sorcerer Jellum and crafty gangster Kells. As with Drothe, Hulick presents these characters as individuals with interesting and meaningful subjectivities of their own, something he also does with the book's numerous and memorable villains and ne'er-do-wells.

The best part of Among Thieves, though, is the world building. I use this term with some hesitation, given its association with the perceived "need" felt by some SF/F authors to litter their novels with wikipedia-style infodumps and heaps of useless and distracting errata. But the construction of rich and immersive secondary worlds is an essential element of epic fantasy, and the degree to which an author succeeds or fails to do so has a disproportionate bearing on the fantasy novel's success. Keeping that in mind, I can say without hesitation that the world Hulick builds is as rich and immersive as any I've come across in recent memory. For Ildrecca and the Empire, Hulick takes medieval Byzantium as its starting point, and then peppers it with a healthy dose of Renaissance Italy and to that adds layers of refreshingly original make-believe. It would take me ages to get into all the details, so suffice to say that I found the social structure of Ildreccan society (and the parallel criminal society, the Kin), as well as the theological underpinnings of the state, endlessly fascinating. Not only are these sociological elements well-developed, they are also pervasive, internalized and internally consistent--no small feat.

I also found myself enjoying the fencing scenes--much more than normal. I've come to understand that Hulick has a background in rapier combat, and it shows in the best possible way. Though occasionally over long, some of the book's best moments come as Drothe desperately tries to extract himself from one fight or another.

Of course, as with most debut novels, there are some issues. While the plot is generally well-paced and exciting, it does get overcomplicated at times. There are a few too many moving parts and a few too many dangled threads. As a result, some of the book's characters feel as they were introduced to great effect, only to be underutilized in the end. And there is that rather ghastly torture scene, which doesn't add anything and feels awfully out of place too.

Nevertheless, it's important for me to stress that these issues did not inhibit my enjoyment of the book. Among Thieves is, without a doubt, an assured debut that hints at great things to come from a talented and exciting new writer. Score one for enchantment...

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the exquisite world-building; +1 for the great characters.

Penalties: -1 for the moments when the story got tangled up in itself.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. "Well worth your time and attention."

Read about our scoring system, in which a sufficiently random sample of books would normally distribute in a bell curve around a mean of 5, here.

INTERVIEW with Peter Higgins

Genre-smashing author Peter Higgins recently “sat down” to have an interview with us at Nerds of a Feather. We discuss such wide ranging topics as his influences, writing style, and incessant love of vampires (despite the fact that he doesn't write about them). For those of you who don't know, Wolfhound Century is the first book of Peter Higgins's new series, one set in a Russian dystopia. It sets the stage for a riveting series that fans of dark fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, and even noir will no doubt enjoy. Check out our review of Wolfhound Century here. And enjoy our interview with Peter!

NoaF: Your debut novel, Wolfhound Century, is truly genre-smashing. What have been your main influences as a writer? And how difficult do you find merging such disparate influences? 

PH: A whole heap of influences were at work when I was writing Wolfhound Century – from fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, history, folklore, the art and writing of the early 20th Century – but the one book that changed me from being a reader to being a writer was Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. I came to it quite late, and I vividly remember being completely bowled over by its ambition and richness. Reading it was like a door opening into a new place. It showed me there was no limit to what you could do with fantasy: there were no rules and no walls, no borders that couldn’t be crossed.

When I was bringing everything together in Wolfhound Century, I found that the most important thing was to be absolutely clear about what each different element means for the story. It’s the story – the characters and the book’s immersive world – that matters, and everything needs to help and add to that. A thriller structure is a fantastic discipline: it focuses you on keeping the tension high and the plotlines moving, with plenty of threat and surprise. Once the story is in place you can open other windows and let different ideas and influences in – other kinds of writing, other ways of seeing the world – and hopefully the reader will relax and go with you and enjoy the recognition and the surprises. 

NoaF: What are your top three books of all time (in any genre), and why? 

PH: Only three? That’s a tall order, but okay. The books that have stayed with me the longest are the ones that took me absolutely by surprise when I picked them up, because they were doing so much more than I expected to find. They were fuller and richer and more extreme, they were crossing borders and going into territories I had no idea they’d go into. And every time I go back to one of them, it's changed and there’s something else to find. 

Apart from The Book of the New Sun (which I’m not counting again as I’ve already mentioned it) my list at the moment would include Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend and Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914 – 1991. I would also definitely want to find a place for Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man trilogy (counting that as one book), which grows in depth and complexity every time I think about it. 

NoaF: What inspired you to write Wolfhound Century?

PH: At first I had an idea of writing an epic fantasy set in a northern/central European-like world, with endless dark forests and wintry Baltic shores, but every time one of my characters picked up a sword I felt someone else had already done it better. There were also questions rumbling away at the back of my mind: What's this about? Why does it matter? Where does its emotional and intellectual charge come from? 

When I got the idea of shifting the period of the story forward in time to the early 20th century, and suddenly the whole thing came alive for me. I realized I could keep the forests and shores and the mythic/fantasy creatures there, but the story could be done as a fast, focused thriller, there was a new wealth of art and literature and ideas to draw on, and a dark, cruel, extraordinary history to underlie it. The key inspiration, I guess, was seeing that all these things I’d been interested in, but that I’d been keeping in separate mental compartments, could all be brought into the same world together and draw energy from one another. 

NoaF: The Russian and Soviet historical influences on Wolfhound Century are hard to miss. What gave you this interest in creating a Soviet dystopia? And how important was extensive research in producing a believable world? 

PH: Well, I’m a child of the Cold War: I grew up in the shadow of the four minute warning, mutually assured destruction, looking out of the window and really fearing the bright flash on the horizon. I remember imagining what it would be like to have been born on the other side of the Iron Curtain. There was this awareness of Russia as an inaccessible and threatening but also mysterious and intriguing 'other place.' All of that went very deep. 

The research was hugely important for Wolfhound Century. I came at it from lots of different directions: novels and poetry and memoirs, films and art and music and propaganda, folklore and wildlife and food and photographs. I dug out a 1914 Baedeker’s travelers guide to Russia, which was fantastically useful about things like transport and money. Russia wasn’t the only source: I also used a lot of material from Germany, Finland, and central Europe generally. I wanted the world of Wolfhound Century to feel as authentic as possible, with a strong sense of atmosphere and place, so that the characters’ emotional world would also feel real. 

But very little research found its way into the book unchanged: it’s skewed and twisted and re-imagined. Wolfhound Century isn’t a straightforward re-creation of a historical place or period: one of its underlying themes is that history isn’t fixed, that there are lots of possibilities in play at any moment, though totalitarian regimes try to force people to accept that their view of history-as-destiny is inescapable. 

NoaF: What were the easiest (and most difficult) character perspectives to write?

PH: I think the easiest – certainly the most fun to write – were the bad guys. Bad guys, in essence, do what they want. They’re absolutely clear about their motivation, and they express it to the absolute maximum, without doubt or self-questioning. As they grow as characters, they become crueler and more dramatic, more certain, more daring. 

Writing about the ‘good guys’ is more complex, because they haven’t chosen their path: they’re thrown out of their normal lives by extraordinary events and sudden, unexpected danger. They have to make choices, and those choices have painful consequences, for themselves and those close to them. They have to do extreme things to survive, and in one sense they necessarily become harsher and more desperate, but they also learn new things about themselves and grow larger and deeper as people, as their sense of the world and their place in it changes. 

Of course, there’s always the possibility – history is not fixed – that a protagonist might lose spirit or turn cruel, and a ‘bad guy’ might just grow over time into something else. 

NoaF: I found the entities that populate your world intriguing. Wolfhound Century includes fantastic beings as giants, the golem-esque mudjhiks, sentient rain, and angels (and "angel skin") intriguing. What influenced you in this aspect of your world creation?

PH: This is a world in which the things you find in the folklore and literature of Russia and Scandinavia and central Europe are real, and part of the experience of the people who live there. Again, I’ve twisted and re-imagined and added ideas from elsewhere, and not everything ‘belongs’ in that world: the angels, for example, are very much intrusions from outside, in every sense; disruptive alien incursions. And I’ve also – of course – been inspired by the fantasy and science fiction tradition. Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History, for example, is definitely a candidate for my top books list. 

One of the broader influences at work in Wolfhound Century is the idea that everything in the world – not just creatures but trees and artefacts, the elements themselves, the stuff the universe is made of – is alive, sentient, intelligent, or could be. That’s a very old and deep idea: it’s central to shamanism, and runs deep in the folklore. It comes through in Russian literature – in Pushkin or Gogol or Bulgakhov, for example - and it was still alive in 20th century Russian science. There’s a fantastic passage from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who drove early Soviet thinking about the human colonisation of space and transhumanism, which I like to quote: 

‘There is no substance which cannot take the form of a living being. The simplest being is the atom. Therefore the whole universe is alive and there is nothing in it but life.’

NoaF: I appreciated how morality is relative in your world, which is not witnessing a fight between good and evil. Instead, the two sides are struggling for their share in the emerging order. I would love to hear your thoughts on the increasingly gritty, complex morality found in recent books in the genre. 

PH: I’d say that complex morality has always been there, in the most interesting books in the genre (I’m assuming you mean fantasy here). But one of the things that is, I think, relatively new is the darkness and violence and general muddiness of some of the worlds being created, which for me is a very interesting and creative development. As I read it, it’s reflecting a desire to clear away some of the pre-packaged expectations of fantasy writing, look again at the established conventions, and uncover some of the troubling uncertainty that those conventions papered over.

If you take the clear structure of good and evil out of fantasy, there is a risk of descending into gratuitousness or whimsy, but I personally haven’t come across much of that. I love it that non-human figures – elves, vampires, wizards, for example – tend not to bring a clear and familiar good/evil framework with them into a story. It’s better that they’re nuanced, strange, different, other, and it’s up to the writer, the characters, the reader, to build a new framework of morality around that. Each book has to do that work afresh, for itself: and in doing so, it implicitly or explicitly challenges and re-imagines the classic books that went before. There’s no Gandalf or Council of Elrond to clarify what’s good and what’s evil, appoint a hero and give a quest the weight of collective sanction and authority. Setting out to change your world is an uncertain, personal decision: stepping away from the crowd and taking risks in the dark. 

I would add, though, that good fantasy writing has always done that, and today’s established conventions have their roots in the most successful of yesterday’s brave creative adventures. It’s striking that, for me at least, the emergence of new takes on the fantasy genre hasn’t undermined or diminished the more ‘traditional’ kind: if anything, the opposite. One of the great things about the way genres develop is that good new additions somehow also enrich the predecessors they build on. 

NoaF: George R.R. Martin has talked about two types of writers--architects or gardeners. Whereas architects make extensive blueprints and plan everything out, gardeners dig a hole, plant a seed, and see what pops up. Which type are you, an architect or a gardener? And what difficulties have you encountered (owing to your writing type)?

PH: I’m not sure I’d go with that distinction: it feels to me that a book is a building made entirely of gardens. I start with a plan, but every part of it keeps growing and changing or dying and affecting every other part. 

The thing that scares me most about writing is getting part of the way through and running out of road. That used to happen to me a lot, until I learned never to start without a plan. The story doesn’t keep to the plan, because the characters take over, but the thing to do then is change the plan, not abandon it. And for me, finishing the book is only the first stage. I do a lot of editing: editing can be the most fun, and the bit where some of the best work gets done.

NoaF: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? 

PH: That’s really hard to answer, because everyone needs to hear different things at different times. You make some progress, then you hit a problem and you have to figure out how to get past it. I’ve found that moving on usually depends on unexpectedly picking up some scrap of an idea from somewhere – a hint of a new way of looking at things – something you've heard before but hadn't really understood. One thing I would always say, though, is, cast your net widely, and don't only study other writers: you might pick up the hint you need from musicians, painters, animators, actors, video-game designers, anybody who's trying to do anything creative, whatever the form.

NoaF: Roughly when can we expect the next installment of the series? 

PH: The next part, Truth and Fear, is coming out early in 2014.

NoaF: Last Question. Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Aliens, or Robots? 

PH: Vampires, no hesitation: beautiful, cultured, hunted, lonely, cursed; brilliant exiles doomed to outlive their time, suffering the knowledge of their own cruelty and the pain of passionate, impossible love. My first proper encounter with a vampire was when Superman met Count Dragorin in Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen #142, ‘The Man From Transilvane’. I keep a framed copy on the wall by my desk. Dragorin’s dangerousness, sadness and dignity got under my skin and the feeling’s never left me. 

NoaF: Thank you so much, Peter!

Wired Reviews Iron Man 3 in Comic Form

I've been obsessed with the idea of doing music reviews in comic form. Wired beat me to it, kind:

Read the rest here...as if those bastards need your clicks.

Microreview [crime fiction]: Complex 90

Complex 90

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Titan Books

The Meat

Like any American—or rather any literate American—I like the idea of free books. That’s pretty much why I contribute to this site, that and “helping a buddy out.” But, getting free books means having to read the free books.

Complex 90 remained at the bottom of the “to read” stack of comics and novels next to my bed.  It didn’t deserve to be at the bottom of the pile. Complex 90 is good. Very good.

Before we get to the review, I should confess that I have never liked Mickey Spillane and I have always hated Mike Hammer. When I was 19, my junior college history professor gave me a copy of I, The Jury. He was in the process of becoming a conservative—a process he later explained was a direct consequence of working in such an intensely liberal environment. He knew that I was a fan of crime fiction—mainly Hammett, Chandler, and whatever Jim Marr’s Murder Can Be Fun told me to read. Perhaps he thought that through Spillane he could save me from liberalism, especially if I chose to pursue an academic career.

I read it. I hated it.

A few years later, I read a couple more Spillane novels. But by this time, it was the Bush Era. My political views—always left, thanks to my socialist father—had become rigid and like any young idealist I was humorless, unforgiving, and fond of politicizing everything, especially crime fiction and film. Hammer’s hypernationalism, his casual chauvinism and misogyny turned me off. Very off.

I am now older, maybe even wiser. And I have experienced firsthand and found repulsive the left-liberal groupthink that is academe. I was ready for Complex 90.

This is a Cold War novel, peopled by KGB agents, intellectual turncoats, and spineless politicians. The book begins with Hammer having escaped from a Soviet jail, dropping 45 reds on his two-month journey out from behind the Iron Curtain. The P.I. is brought to the Pentagon for debriefing. At this point, still being an unconvinced reader, I expected the rest of the novel to be a recounting of Hammer’s Soviet vacation, 220 pages of with Hammer dispassionately killing commies and bedding their ladies as he fights his wake to Turkey, being a general asshole all the while.

Spillane’s a better storyteller than that. Hammer’s carnage abroad is a mere set-up for a far more interesting and intricate story. Granted, Mike Hammer does what he does best, dispatching goons, bedding women, and telling bureaucrats where they can shove it. But these tough guy antics serve the plot, which is compelling and fairly complicated. The book is driven subtle twists and turns as Hammer seeks to unravel why he ended up in Moscow escorting a conservative Senator on a fact-finding mission—and who he has to kill next. I won’t give away much more than that and spoil you fun, of which there is a lot.

I am not at all sure which part of the book are Mickey Spillane’s and which parts Max Allan Collins is responsible for—an indication of Collins’ mastery. Though I haven’t read much Spillane, I know it, his hardboiled style long an American institution, the tough guy counterpart to Chandler’s similarly institutionalized P.I. cool. After seeing countless imitations and impersonations, most of us “know” Spillane’s style, or at least when someone is aping it. But Complex 90 feels authentic, as if Collins purposely turned down this imaginary Spillane. It’s more likely that Collins has studied Spillane’s style as a result of their friendship and collaborations. In less capable hands, Complex 90 could have come off as another unnecessary attempt at being hardboiled. But Complex 90’s text is subtle, Hammer’s attitude never being mere exhibition.

Well played, sirs. Well played. I am looking forward to read more of Spillane’s work now. I’m confident in my leftism these days, so kill as many commies as you like.

The Math

Objective Score: 8/10

Bonus: +1 for the NASA bit towards the end; +1 for the following lines: “As a prisoner of war, he expected ethical and humane treatment. But this was a cold war and my response would be in kind.” (Politically distasteful, but contextually fitting vis-à-vis the dude who was about to get his.)

Penalties: -1 for inappropriately-timed anal sex

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

We Rank 'Em: Most Anticipated Free Comic Book Day Titles

This Saturday at comic book stores around the country will give out free comic books to patrons. The number of books varies from store to store so be sure to check with your LCS about their rules.  To find a store near you click here.  Free Comic Book Day has become an annual holiday for my children and me and I hope you can support your LCS this weekend and take home some free books to boot.

Here are my top 10 most anticipated titles for this year's FCBD:

10.  Mr. Puzzle: My children have read a few books by Mr. Eliopoulos (Okie Dokie Donuts is Henry's favorire) and this one looks like it will be sure to please.  I always love getting books to share with my kids on Free Comic Book Day.

9. NFL Rushzone O/T Legends:: Here me out on this one.  I am a teacher of sports and am curious to see the intersection of my 2 worlds.  Not expecting much, but intrigued.

8. Atomic Robo and Friends::  While I haven't read as much Atomic Robo as I would like, I have enjoyed every title I have read and would enjoy a free book.

7. Star Wars/Last Airbender combo: I enjoy both series and would most likely enjoy short stories from each universe.

6. Bongo Free-for-All: Worst Free Comic Book Day ever.

5. Mouse Guard/Rust flip book:  Archaia publishes some of the most beautiful stories in all of comics and both Mouse Guard and Rust have me captivated.  Very excited about this one.

4. Disney Fairies: Easy there tiger.  I am excited to have a book, while gendered, that I can share with my daughter.  She likes other comics, but I feel this one could serve as her entryway into my world.

3. Infinity: One of my early entries into the comic world was through Infinity Gauntlet so Thanos will forever hold a special place in my heart, even if Death won't have his.

2. Walking Dead: One of my favorite titles on the market today.  I am guessing this one will do well.

1. Top Shelf Kids Club: This is always my the most read in our house.  Owly, Johnny Boo, Korgi, Pirate Penguin, Ninja Chicken, Upside Down, and Monster on the Hill.  How do they cram so much awesome into one book!

Thursday Morning Superhero

Once again it is time for our weekly comic round-up.  Sandwiched between C2E2 and Free Comic Book Day was quite a good week for comic book readers.  There is a new Fairest arc which you know about already, Ten Grand debuted, and the Age of Ultron continues to impress.   Onward to the books!

Pick of the Week:

Ten Grand #1 - Joe is a private eye for hire who is looking to make good on his previous life.  He was granted a second chance to spend time with his wife on the condition that he make amends for his past discretions.  The twist is that he struck a deal with the angels and if he fails to uphold his end of the bargain then he will spend eternity separated from his one true love.  Throw in the brilliant writing of John Michael Straczynski and the dark muddled art of Ben Templesmith and you have an instant classic.  This book had me hooked from the first panel and delivered until the end.  It appears that Image has another hit on its hand.

The Rest:
Age of Ultron #7 - The repercussions of time travel are present in this book as Wolverine and Sue Storm quickly learn the risk in messing with the timelines.  Another great issue that may have a lasting impact on the Marvel universe.

Hawkeye #10 - Matt Fraction takes Hawkeye on a darker trip setting up a new arc that has me intrigued.  This issue adds depth and complexity and is a welcome departure from the lighthearted fun that he has infused in the series.

Fairest #15 - As a fan of Fables I was certainly excited about the spin-off Fairest, only to remain a little underwhelmed.  The new arc, however, feel reminiscent to the Fables that hooked me years ago with the beauty of its pages and the thoughtful storytelling.

Thanos Rising #2 - The origin of Thanos continues as he turns his knife from animal specimen to his classmates and more.  A little, ok a lot, cheesy at times, but still enjoyable to see the twisted path that took Thanos from a misunderstood child to the tyrant he is.

Interview: Comics Writer Sean E. Williams

After working in film and television for a number of years, Sean E. Williams transitioned successfully into writing comics. He currently has two active titles, Artful Daggers, a steampunkish tale of covert operations set after the events of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, as well as the new arc of DC/Vertigo's Fables spin-off Fairest, which debuts today. In between his appearances at C2E2, where he crossed paths with our own comics guru Mikey, he took some time to answer questions about both of his titles and the evolution of the industry.

NF: Full disclosure to our readers, after the dust of the Hollywood writers' strike settled, you and I worked on two screenplay projects together, but then you left Hollywood for what I assume is a far more sane environment. It seems like very quickly you found yourself working in comics. How did that transition happen?

SW: It actually came about fairly naturally. More naturally than I would have expected (especially coming from Hollywood). One part of it is (long story short) that I'd become friends with Bill Willingham and pitched him a story that led to my arc of Fairest. Another part of it was that I'd started to work with an exec at a production company who was also an editor at a comics publisher, and I had started pitching him comic ideas as well as movies. And the third aspect of my transition into comics was that I'd had a prose novella published for a property I was trying to get made into a television series. So when my wife got a job in rural Minnesota, I took a step back and realized I was doing more comics and prose writing than scripts and screenplays, and that I could do it just as easily from the Midwest as I could in Los Angeles, and for a lot cheaper. At that point, I went all-in on comics and prose.

NF: Comics and film are both collaborative, visual media. Can you talk about the overlap between writing for the two? Was the learning curve pretty smooth, or were there a few things that stood out as significant differences?

SW: Great question! A lot of people don't make those connections between comics and film, but you're spot on. Coming from screenwriting, I think I had a pretty easy transition. What helped, especially coming into Vertigo, was that I'd written six issues of a comics series for a small press company, so I was able to get the feel of comics there. Training wheels, basically. The hardest part was getting my brain to start chopping actions up in to smaller parts, for panels. In a screenplay, you can say “He jumps on a horse, firing his blaster at the aliens, killing three.” But in comics, it's “Panel one: He jumps on a horse. Panel Two: He fires a gun. Panel Three: The aliens get hit.” So that was a transition, but by the end of the six issues I'd trained my brain to think that way. It's basically the equivalent of calling out each shot in film, which you don't really do in screenwriting. I'd also gotten back into reading comics in film school, so my brain was use to the look, feel, and pacing of comics. I'd think it'd be hard if you were coming into it cold, but like TV and film, it's a learnable format for writing.

The other part of your question that's important to point out is that it's collaborative. I know some screenwriters (I was going to say “starting out screenwriters,” but I know some produced screenwriters who still have this issue) who struggle worrying about what a screenplay will look like on the screen. One of the best lessons I ever learned in Hollywood is that there's no point worrying about the words on the page being perfect, because the audience in the theater isn't going to see them. Not to mention the fact that the version of the movie in your head isn't the one that makes it on the page. That's the thing with film: there's the version in your head, the version on the page (the screenplay), the version that gets shot (with all the production setbacks, limitations, and happy accidents that go along with it), and the version that gets edited to be the final movie. The difference between the first version and the last is staggering, so why worry about getting what's in your head onto the page perfectly in the first place?

Comics are the same way. There's the version in your head, the version on the page (the script), the version the penciller turns in, the version the inker turns in, the version the colorist turns in, and the the version that finally gets lettered. And each phase can really change the story. With one of the upcoming issues of Fairest, we had Andrew Dalhouse, the colorist, add blood spray to change an injured character into a killed one after Stephen Sadowski, the penciller, turned a tussle into a brawl. You, as the writer, have very little control once it leaves your hands, which is the best part of collaboration, in my opinion. Everyone brings their best, and it raises the whole book up.

NF: You seem to be walking successfully on both sides of the street right now ­­ with a creator-­owned title (Artful Daggers) being published digitally by MonkeyBrain Comics and now an arc of Fairest for the granddaddy of them all, Vertigo's parent DC Comics. Can you talk about the biggest differences working under the two models?

SW: They're really two different animals. It's great having the support of editors at Vertigo to improve my writing and make sure that everything stays on schedule production-wise. For this latest draft of a Fairest script I turned in, Shelly Bond insisted that I add a flashback, and she was totally right. Again, I love a collaboration that makes the book better, which is everyone's goal. And with creator-owned books, it's all on you, which I personally love. If you forget to write the solicit, it's on you (something we actually had a momentary panic about last night on our weekly Artful Daggers call). If you run out of bristol boards, you have to track them down yourself. At DC, all those things are being checked and double-checked by everyone up and down the ladder. They're totally different, but both great experiences in different ways.

NF: How did you make the leap to Fairest, which was a pre-­existing title? Were you hand­-selected by Bill Willingham, or was there a different process involved?

I guess you get the longer version of the story after all! When I first pitched Bill to do a story in the Fables universe, Fairest was only an idea he'd started to put together. I think he'd started to talk to Adam Hughes about doing the covers for a spin-off series, but it definitely wasn't finalized yet. This was at San Diego Comic Con in 2010, and Chris Roberson's first standalone Cinderella arc had done well, and he was already working on the second. I asked Bill if it'd be okay if I pitched him an idea for something similar, and he said yes, so I went to a local place away from the con and wrote out a whole proposal that night and gave it to him the next day, which he definitely wasn't expecting!

Here's the thing, though, I'd known Bill for years at that point, so it's not like I was some fan who asked him out of the blue. We'd met at SDCC in 2003, I think, when I approached him about doing Fables as a series or movie (it wasn't available), and so we started trying to get Proposition Player made around town, to the point that by the end I'd even written the first draft of a pilot script for Bill to rewrite. So he knew that I knew how to use a keyboard, at least.

So basically, I've been working on Fairest since 2010, is the short answer.

NF: Fairest is interesting on a lot of levels, but I'm wondering from a writer's standpoint what it's like to step into something that's had a couple of arcs already, but doesn't have 50 years of lore behind it like your Batman or Spider-­Man titles. Did you have a lot of latitude in writing this arc, or was there something like a TV model where you broke the stories in collaboration or in support of a larger vision?

SW: You hit on a couple of different things with this question without realizing it.

First, since I'm dealing with Kipling Fables and some characters from the epics of Hinduism, I'm working with a bit longer on the lore-scale than most superhero stories, for better and worse. For instance, when I pitched this version of my arc (there was a whole other arc I worked on for almost a year, the first one I pitched actually) to Bill, I was keeping with the Fables rule of “what happened in the Fables universe isn't necessarily the same as what the stories tell.” But then halfway into writing the arc Bill told me he wanted me to keep the Jungle Book as it was, and not change it. So I had to adjust the backstory for one of my characters, which worked out fine, if not better, but it was an adjustment mid-stream. On the other hand, with Nalayani, who is a minor character in The Mahabharata but the star of my arc, I read three totally different versions of her story while doing my research, so I had a little more wiggle room with her.

As far as breaking the story goes, I pitched this version to Bill after meeting with him over the holidays in 2010, when he told me he and Shelly Bond wanted me to write an arc centered on the character who'd become “The Maharaja” in my arc. That was all they gave me, a character, and I came up with the rest for the pitch. Then Bill and I would kicking around ideas to flesh it out. For instance, he wanted there to be no men in the Indu, the Fables world where my arc takes place. Which was a great idea, and really added a lot to the dynamic of the world. But for the most part, Bill's been fairly hands-off, which I really appreciate as a writer. Another good example is when Stephen Sadowski, the penciller for the arc, drew the fight scene I mentioned before to be a lot more gruesome than I'd envisioned, Bill okayed killing off a fairly substantial character, without really worrying about it. That kind of freedom is liberating, and intimidating at the same time.

NF: Finally, I wanted to ask something a little broader of scope. The digital revolution has traditional publishing famously shaking in its boots, but I don't sense that same kind of dread in the world of comics -- ­­ possibly due in part to the success of Comixology. What do you think the digital delivery model offers for both creators and fans that makes the industry seem more in balance than the traditional print model?

I think digital is going to save comics, with ComiXology playing a huge role in it. The big reason I think that is that a large part, if not most, of the country doesn't have a local comics shop. I mean, comics aren't carried in groceries anymore, so how else are people going to get (much less discover) comics? I took it for granted while living in LA, which has at least four amazing comics stores, but once I got to rural Minnesota and had to drive an hour and a half to the nearest shop, I saw the biggest hurdle comics had to overcome as an industry. So digital is getting rid of that. Having tablets (which are the perfect size for reading comics, and have better and brighter color than paper) take off and become as ubiquitous as they have is a big part of that too. They go hand in hand. So that's the fan side of things.

From the creator side, it means if you can make a comic, you can get it out into the world. There aren't any gatekeepers anymore (for better and worse). In addition to the web, you've now got ComiXology Submit, and Amazon's Kindle Comic Creator, so you can reach basically anyone world-wide. Which still blows my mind. It doesn't mean you'll be a hit, but it at least gives you a chance to have your work read.

NF: I know you're out there a lot and available for fan interaction, so what's the best way to track you down on the interwebs, and in­-person in the coming months?

I'm on Twitter all the time, as is most of the comics industry, at @sean_e_williams, or you can like my Facebook page for updates there, or my tumblr/blog is www.seanewilliams.com.

My next convention appearance is CONvergence, up in the Minneapolis area, followed by San Diego Comic Con later in July.