• Comikaze 2011
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by LargeMarge67 on 11.08.11

If you are a comic book fan and don’t know the name Josh Fialkov, I only have one question for you; Does your cave have windows? Josh is one of the most interesting and innovative writers working in the comics game today, as his stories explore the dark depths of the human psyche, as well as the fears and insecurities we all share. He has created a body of work that anyone with a pulse would enjoy and using the word “prolific” to describe him and his work is almost inadequate. With titles such as Elk’s Run, Tumor, Echoes and Alibi, he continually churns out terrifying tales that capture the imagination while simultaneously scaring the shit out of the reader. His latest titles, The Last of the Greats and I, Vampire, are no exception and if you haven’t done so already, you must immediately go to your local comic book shop and pick them up! (Especially The Last of the Greats from Image Comics, which is a tour de force that knocks the superhero genre on its ass! If it’s not in stock, order it or I will find you! You’ve been warned…) I recently had the opportunity to interview Josh at Comikaze Expo in Los Angeles, California and found him to be personable, forthcoming and extremely funny. Enjoy.

What comic books were you hooked on as a kid?                                 

The things I read were Creepy and Eerie (the Warren magazines) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Mirage, old black-and-white stuff – I really love that stuff. I really (also) liked the usual…Spiderman and Batman. I remember reading A Death in the Family when I was eight years old and being heart-broken when Robin died. Also, the stuff that kind of stuck with me after I stopped reading those were books like, Usagi Yojimbo and Concrete…Vampirella – I always loved Vampirella. Stuff like that. I always tilted towards horror from the time I was a little kid and I always loved horror movies.

Did you read Tomb of Dracula?

I did, but not as much, like I read it more as an adult. I read it when they did that giant hardcover…and I read issues here and there. I read a little (of the) Blade stuff here and there. You know, when I was a teenager I was really deep into comics and then when I was getting toward college-age I sort of drifted away and then came back around 2000.

You earned your BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Acting and Directing from Emerson College. How has your theater background shaped the way you work in comics?

I think a lot about it with dialogue…and character. That’s the difference, I think. Everything you do in theater has to be revealing character, right? Whether it’s the dialogue, whether it’s the action, whether it’s the lighting…every piece reveals character and that’s how I write my books. Every thing I do has to be about the characters. It can’t be about big action set pieces, it has to be about character first. And I think we get away from that a lot in comics and, honestly, that’s why there is sort of a disconnect between people and most mainstream comics. Like, people who aren’t…we’re nerds right? So, I’ve read every issue of Fantastic Four…and that’s a bad example because Fantastic Four is terrific right now but you can read, say, Mark Millar’s run and everyone is acting out of character. Character-wise, none of it makes any sense but we know the characters so well that we just fill in the gaps…and that, to me, is sloppy. It’s sloppy shorthand and you see it a lot in comics. So it’s something I obsess over not doing.

Did you have any experience with writing workshops at Emerson College?

Not really, I use my friends more than anything. I have a small group of friends that will see almost everything that goes out, before it goes out, at least the first issue or two because I like to get honest feedback and they’re people who know me and trust me. So they know that the weird stuff is there for a reason, they know that stuff is happening for a reason but will say, “This doesn’t make sense or this doesn’t make sense.” I think that one of the worst things you can do as a writer is not share your work. Workshops, I think…the impression I’ve always had is, anytime I’ve met anybody or talked to anybody, is that the jealousies and all that stuff get in the way versus doing it with a good friend, like Brian here (The Flash co-writer, Brian Buccellato). I can send Brian anything and he’s going to be honest with me and it’s not going to be bitter. Because we’re both equal. We’re both working, we’re both busting our asses and both respect each other. Having people like that who, not only do you respect their work but you respect their opinion, is tantamount to getting it right.

Your books are a perfect marriage of art and story. How do you go about choosing and artist to team up with?

The DC stuff, it’s chosen for you, there’s some dialogue but really it’s up to them. On the creator-owned stuff, I have a book full of ideas, you know, I have my list, these are the thirty things I’d like to do one day, but it really comes down to when I meet an artist something in their art will speak to me and I’ll say, “Oh, I’d really like to do this kind of story or I’d like to do that kind of story.” Sometimes it’s one of those stories I have in that notebook and sometimes it’s something new. It’s very much like…the Marvel and DC stuff is sort of set up in a way where most of the time there’s a big barrier between you and the artist and that, to me, is so ridiculous. You need to be talking to the artist because there needs to be an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish tonally and emotionally and, again, with character, all that stuff, because at the end of the day your artist is your actors, your artist is your set designer, your artist is your stunt coordinator…your artist is all those pieces and there’s things that I will never be able to describe on the written page as well as you can get across in a conversation or with references and stuff like that.

How do you generate ideas?

With reading. I read a lot. I read other (comic) books, I read non-fiction, I read magazines…I read a lot of magazines. It’s the great thing with the iPad, I subscribe to like twenty magazines. I will usually just get a nibble of something or some piece of research that I’ve done that will stay with me and kind of keep me going. The work-for-hire stuff, again, you’re kind of given parameters and you’re job is to figure out…okay, I have my box. How do I make the most of that box?

You made a great comment on your website – “Build the fucking chair", which deals with getting past the planning stages and just writing. What are some of your personal writing habits that keep you on track with deadlines?

I have a kid. No, seriously, it sounds funny but I’ve always been prolific and always worked my ass off and output a lot…after I had my kid I had like three months where I didn’t write at all and then I had that moment where I was like, “Alright, well I’m broke!” and that was it, it’s like I have a kid to take care of so no matter what’s going on I genuinely…I hate everything else about writing. I hate the business, I hate the pitching, I hate having to deal with notes and all the bullshit. The actual physical act of tap-a-tap-a-tap-a (creating the work on a keyboard) is the one place where I feel like I am completely in control, I know what I’m doing…if you don’t feel the solace in writing then you shouldn’t be a writer. If the part where actually creating the material is not pleasurable for you…and look, everyone has jobs that they hate. I’ve done plenty of jobs that I had to do, you know, you start working on it and it becomes miserable but at its core, if you’re writing and writing for yourself you, should love it. (It) should be like, every minute that I have free, I want to be writing.

In the first issues of your books, The Last of the Greats and I, Vampire, you took different approaches. LOTG employs more exposition to tell the story while in I, Vampire you use a more minimalist approach. How do you decide which approach to use?

The difference between the two…in I, Vampire I am using pre-established rules in a pre-established world that all sort of works, so I don’t have to do a lot of that work, like I could do the dialogue quickly. Last of the Greats is like, it’s almost too big of an idea and I wanted to get it all out of the way as quick as possible and as painlessly as possible, which again, that then influences the shape of the plot because I know I have to do an info dump. Which means…there has to be some reason for explaining all this, otherwise it’s just captions and nobody wants to read that. Again, that’s one of those things that shapes the book. I also think it’s more acceptable in a superhero book to be wordier and to spend more time explaining and, you know honestly, that’s one of the problems…it’s funny because Brian (Buccellato) is standing right here, I talk about him all the time…but in Flash, if you read the first issue of the New 52’s Flash, he establishes who Barry is, who the people around him are, what his powers are and everything you need to know to understand the rules of The Flash in this beautiful, elegant way…in every issue! That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. The reason the books come out as issues instead of graphic novels is because, in theory, people want to buy the issues, which means that every issue, in some way, needs to be self-contained. You know, the idea that every issues could be someone’s first is true, especially now with digital (comics) and it’s something that we all have to aspire to do.

There is a letter at the end of The Last of the Greats 2, in which you reach out to the readers. What motivated that?

Just the realities, just knowing the market. Knowing what the DC books sell versus what everyone else in the world sells, and I mean the New 52 stuff, when the fact is, of the New 52, there’s a bunch of great books, right? There’s a bunch of really great books. If you then expand that and look to the independent book world, independent comics are doing things than mainstream comics will never be able to. They just, frankly, they can’t be daring the way that we can. They can’t take risks the way that we can and they can’t fall on their face. Honestly, that’s kind of the best part…every issue of The Last of the Greats I have no idea what people are going to think because I’m going out there naked and doing crazy shit. I mean, the best example is the first issue of I, Vampire ended on an A.A. Milne quote, originally, and they wouldn’t let me use it because A.A. Milne’s very litigious…that’s ridiculous. You can use a quote. It’s a quote. It’s an attributed quote. You can use that in anything, anywhere in the world but they’re so scared of it that it’s like, okay…then you have to spend the day, literally a day, trying to find another quote as appropriate as the sentence that inspired the entire book. It’s the best quote, I’ll tell you the quote, ready? “If you live to be a hundred, may I live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” That’s what the whole book’s about…is the idea of, if we’re going to die we need to die together, like, I can’t live without you no matter what. They won’t let me use it! What?! It’s like a seventy year old quote, who gives a shit? But…there’s a freedom in independent comics and an ease that just doesn’t exist anywhere else but that comes with a downside, which is that The Last of the Greats sold a tenth of what I, Vampire sold, literally…and I, Vampire sold really well and I’m psyched that it sold really well but if The Last of the Greats sold even half of what I, Vampire sold we would be rich! And I, Vampire does not make me rich but that means we get to do more. We don’t have to worry about, do we have an issue six? Like, can we keep going? Because right now we do the book and we’re subsisting. I can work on other stuff but the artists…this is their job and if the books don’t sell, we don’t get paid, it’s just very simple. And that’s true of every book. It’s just as true of The Walking Dead…if people don’t buy a certain number of books, you can’t make them. I have a five year plan for The Last of the Greats but unless we sell more books, we’ll never get there. It’s just the reality. And it’s not me even me slumming for readers, it’s just the reality of comics. The downside of independent comics is you always have to write as if you’ll get canceled. Like my issue five, it’s a shitty wrap up but it’s a wrap up just in case. You just do it and hope for the best. It’s every indie comic. You know, there’s a handful of books that are really successful, in the indie world, but most of them are just fighting to survive.

Ideally, which of your projects would you like to see make the move to television or movies?

All of them. I mean, Echoes - we’re close to a movie on Echoes, Tumor is already set up, Elk’s Run is set up, Alibi from Top Cow, that’s set up…that stuff is what funds this stuff because it’s hard to build a market, build an audience, in comics. When you add in the movie stuff, suddenly it’s like, oh, we can do this forever. You can literally last forever. It’s an unfortunate reality. I love Hollywood, I love movies, I love TV. The reality is, out of the corner of our eye we have to be looking at what the TV side is and what the movie side is.

So, there it is...

I would like to thank Josh Fialkov for granting me this interview and the organizers of Comikaze Expo for booking him. And kudos to my Nfamousgamers bosses, Chastity and Richard, for the writing gig that led to this amazing experience. I cannot wait to see what Josh comes up with next and will continue to read his current work. Please, do yourself a favor and seek out his books. I guarantee you will not be disappointed. And to those who have an irrational fear of litigation, I have but one thing to say…“Oh, bother.” It’s just a quote so…sue me.