Kickstarter maestros Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray of Paperfilms are at it again, this time with a Western, Abbadon, a tale of murder and mayhem set in a town full of just about every vice you can imagine. As with previous projects, the book is being funded on Kickstarter, and as of this writing is a few thousand dollars from making its goal, with two weeks to go.
It’s only the latest in a series of successful crowdfunding ventures for the Paperfilms team—we spoke with Palmiotti previously about Sex and Violence Vol 2 here and Denver here. This one has a new wrinkle: A partnership with Adaptive Studios, a new company that rescues abandoned IP. Palmiotti graciously answered a few questions about the project and Adaptive for The Beat.
THE BEAT: Unlike some of your other Kickstarters this is an adaptation of an unproduced screenplay? Can you explain the origin of this tale?
JIMMY PALMIOTTI: Justin and I were introduced to the crew from Adaptive Studios by a mutual friend and I flew out to California to meet and talk to them about what our company, Paperfilms does, show them the books we have done and think about how we can work on some projects together. Since Paperfilms is just a couple of people, on our end, we can put books together, but we really don’t have time to do much else and we thought this partnership would be an interesting one since the crew at Adaptive specialize in a lot of multi media including publishing and have connections that we either don’t or don’t have the time to pursue since comics are a very labor intensive medium.
We spoke about a few projects while there, and one special one in particular; Abbadon. We read the screenplay a few times and after some back and forth, thought this would make a great graphic novel with us adding our take on it. Even more attractive to us was we felt it would be a great world building project since the bigger picture outside the graphic novel is the town itself and its place in history. So bottom line is we fell in love with the screenplay, did our take of it, built on it and then went out and put a team together to do the art on the graphic novel. What backers of the Kickstarter will get is a complete story, cover to cover, that has a bigger picture built into it that we hope to continue building on.
THE BEAT: Adaptive Studios’ business plan involving rescuing abandoned IP. What does that mean and how does your partnership work?
PALMIOTTI: Adaptive studios is rescuing some IP as well as working with us to create new properties and exciting graphic novels. With anything I do in this business, it’s all about relationships and partnering with like minds that share similar goals. We do it on every single project when working with artists and designers, creating what we think are the perfect representation of the story we are working on. When I met and spent some time with the crew at Adaptive, I found that we had a lot of the same goals in common which was really exciting. Adaptive studios totally respected with Justin and I did, and since they didn’t do graphic novels themselves, this partnership made sense to us. The best part of working with them is that they really love graphic storytelling and like us, have a love of all genres, so partnering with them has been a no brainer. On Abbadon, they brought the project to us and we fell in love with the idea and built on it. Our next project together will be an original idea we had that they liked, and we are going to see how we can make it all come together. Partnering with anyone doesn’t make sense unless the other person can bring something to the table and we think by working together, we can do some pretty amazing things. Abbadon is our first project and right now, the focus is on us to put together a stunning graphic novel and hopefully a successful Kickstarter campaign.
THE BEAT: You’ve returned to the Western genre, where you told so many great stories with Jonah Hex—did you feel you had more Western stories to tell?
PALMIOTTI: For me, it’s a genre that will never get old because the classic storytelling elements are always at play. A successful genre always has certain elements to it that have universal appeal, and with Abbadon, it’s no different. With Jonah Hex, we based all of our stories around a main character and it was a fun ride, but with something like Abbadon, we can tell a ton of stories based on the set up in this graphic novel we couldn’t tell in a book like Jonah because we were always dealing with content specific guidelines. The book was basically an all ages one and with Abbadon, we are telling a more adult story with elements that we would never get away with in a million years in Hex. So, yes, we have more stories to tell, but we want to tell them as we see them.
THE BEAT: I assume Abbadon refers to the town this is set in—some people may remember it as the name of an enigmatic character from Lost, but it’s also a Biblical term for a bottomless pit. How does the story reflect that?
PALMIOTTI: The town name is based on the biblical name and what it represents. The story and main character is the lawless town itself, and how the people in it are tempting fate on a daily basis. It’s a town where lust, greed, pride, and madness are right at home. It’s the most fun place you can go and it may also be the last place you visit as well, depending on your deepest desires. We took the worst of the classic old west and created a lawless sin city that the reader will find fascinating on many levels. The main story about a killer on the loose has everything to do with the story itself and the characters involved with the hunting of the madman. There is a lot of character development within the 64 pages and its something we have a lot of experience with .
THE BEAT: Reading the description on the Kickstarter page, this sounds like a western detective story. What else should readers know about what this story is about?
PALMIOTTI: The graphic novel Abbadon is set in the late 1880’s American West and features some of the most intriguing characters we have ever had the pleasure to work on. This is the story of an expanding wealthy city steeped in sin, where anything is possible if you have the money, influence and power to obtain it. Poised to become the next boomtown, Abbadon is plagued by a series of grisly murders heralding the arrival of U.S. Marshall Wes Garrett.
A legendary lawman, Garrett’s claim to fame is that he killed a notorious murderer, who cut a bloody swath across the country and left scores of mutilated men, women and children in his wake. Garrett’s arrival exposes the secret that Abbadon’s sheriff Colt Dixon has desperately been trying to conceal – the victims have all been mutilated the same way they were by the killer Garret stopped – a man some called a monster, but the papers called him Bloody Bill.
Garrett and Dixon reluctantly join forces and have opposing ways of dealing with the situation at hand as they try to uncover the killer’s identity in a town so full of corruption that everyone is a suspect. It really is a great story because the characters themselves are really interesting.
THE BEAT: You worked with Fabrizio Fiorentino on All Star Western—what does his art style bring to a Western comic?
PALMIOTTI: Fabrizio knows his stuff and his illustrations and character drawings add a real world quality to the story and his storytelling and figure work breath life into our script in a way that is both beautiful and horrifying at the same time because of the subject matter. When we worked with him on All Star it was towards the end of the run and we wanted to find another project to work on together and this one was the perfect fit. The really cool thing about the book is each page is better than the last.
THE BEAT: The Western genre is considered kind of passe now, but western movies were once as popular as superhero movies are now. Do you think there could ever be a comeback for Westerns or has the time passed?
PALMIOTTI: I think there is always room for a quality story to be told no matter what the genre. Westerns are no different. I find it funny that the American western is a lot more fascinating to people living outside the U.S. and still has strong appeal.
THE BEAT: Any new features of your Kickstarter model with this project? It’s already more than half funded after a few days with minimal promotion (Editors note: , so you must be doing something right!
PALMIOTTI: We tried something different with this Kickstarter and focused on our usual backers first, and now we are spending the next few weeks going out and promoting the book to everyone. Only the people that have done Kickstarters realize just how much work it is to not only create the book, but getting a campaign together and especially promotion is a full time job. With our past Kickstarters, they always start out strong out of the gate and it’s the last few weeks we have to really focus on. The fun part of this process is that if we hit the number we are asking for, we can get really creative with the stretch goals and offer some really cool things to everyone backing Abbadon. At the end of the day, the art and story are the real sellers for this project and its up to us to deliver the goods. I am happiest to see that a lot of people are buying the digital version, which is only $5. I can see that these pledges are coming in from all over the world and I find this all to be really exciting. A big thanks for all of you that have supported this and past projects and to those new to Kickstarter, go have fun and explore the site. There are so many amazing comics and graphic novels to choose from.
Elmore Leonard is known for his fantastic crime novels and his cool, crisp dialogue but he started out writing westerns way back in the 1950s. This collections showcases his western short stories and his immense talent as a writer.
I think it is easy to pass Elmore Leonard off as a writer of crime novels that have been turned into countless films and television adaptations but you would only do that at your own peril. Yes Elmore Leonard has become known for a few of his own tropes; brilliant dialogue, idiotic crooks, plots involving schemes that unravel and precise prose but these tropes fit the crime genre perfectly. Reading Leonard in another genre shows a completely different side to his writing and I think in many ways it is even better.
The Western genre is of course the precursor to the modern American crime novel. The lines between right and wrong are blurred by lawlessness and greed but there are still heroes and villains, both of which are not easily decipherable which makes for very interesting characters. The landscape has more significance and there is a minefield of politics to explore; post-Civil War, race, slavery, Native Americans, immigration, government, Mexico. Issues still alive and kicking today.
In many ways Elmore Leonard’s crime novels are more Westerns than mysteries. His favourite hero/protagonist is often a US Marshall and that is directly born from his western stories. What I found most interesting about Leonard’s western writing was that he explored more themes. His western stories are much more political than his crime novels. Dialogue also takes a back seat, or more correctly his dialogue becomes more prominent in his later writing. This maybe because he was still learning his craft but I suspect it is more reflective of the understated nature of the western genre. Leonard is also much more descriptive in his western writing and again I think this is because there is more significance on the landscape in the genre. Which only proves, even in his early days, Leonard was a master writer who knew his craft like few other writers.
Buy the book here…
Women Get No Respect—at least in Westerns
by Judy Alter
Owen Wister’s 1903 novel The Virginian set a masculine standard for the western novel that endured throughout the twentieth century. Westerns, written by men, featured, among other things, stereotyped heroines—the schoolteacher, the rancher’s daughter, the dancehall girl with the heart of gold. These women were rescued by men but never came to anyone’s rescue.
In Elmer Kelton’s admittedly formulaic 1955 novel, Hot Iron, the villain traps the hero and has him at his mercy. Elmer had the heroine pick up a pair of scissors and run the villain through, saving the hero. The editor would have none of it—the heroine and her scissors momentarily distracted the villain, long enough for the hero to grab his pistol and kill the villain.
The few women who wrote western novels published under pseudonyms, usually initials. As early as the first decades of the twentieth century, Bertha Muzzy wrote a total of fifty-seven novels under the name B. M. Bower. In 1952, novelist Jeanne Williams wrote Tame the Wild Stallion, a young-adult novel featuring a young boy who tames a wild horse while captive on a Mexican ranch. Published under the name J. R. Williams because Prentice-Hall didn’t think boys would read a girls’ book, it won the Texas Institute of Letters Cokesbury Bookstore Award. No one could find the man who wrote the book. Jeanne missed the award ceremony. Her later adult western novels were published under her full name or a feminine pseudonym.
I’ve felt the brunt of this anti-women bias myself. In 1988 my novel, Mattie, won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America, Inc., as the Best Western Novel of the Year. A man who belonged to WWA complained to one of the judges, “That has always been a men’s action category.” And my 1994 novel, Libbie, called western historical romance by Amazon today, was damned in a book review as a soap opera. I like to think a fictional biography of Libbie Armstrong Custer had more significance.
Of course there were always exceptions, women who wrote in the literary rather than genre tradition and didn’t deal with formulas and stereotypes—Mari Sandoz and Willa Cather come to mind.
Today, eno
One of the all-time greatest western novels, Riders to Cibola, by Norman Zollinger, is being reissued by Overlook this month in a new paperback edition. Winner of the Golden Spur Award and honored as one of the Top 20 Western novels of the 20th Century by the Western Writers of America, Riders of Cibola was originally published in 1977.
A sweeping saga that spans generations, Riders to Cibola follows the life a young Mexican orphan, Ignacio Cruz, who lives through eras of intense change – revolutionary upheavals, world wars, and the decline of the American west. Modern readers will relate to the cultural struggles faced by Ignacio Cruz as he battles his tempestuous employers, The MacAndrews clan. Widely regarded as the quintessential novel of old New Mexico; both readers and critics alike have marveled at Zollinger’s vivid depiction of the Tularosa Basin and its harsh yet beautiful landscape.
Praise for Riders to Cibola:
“The raw beauty of New Mexico is the setting of this fine novel which presents a family saga inter-woven with a man’s struggle to exist in two cultures.”
– Rudolphp Anaya,, author of Bless Me, Ultima
“A strong, affecting novel, full of taste and fragrance of the Southwest.”
-Richard Bradfored, author of Red Sky at Morning
“With two Golden Spur Awards, Norman Zollinger has already established himself as a master.”
– Tony Hillerman
The Chronicle Books spring and summer children's catalog arrived last month. I only had time to browse, but Classic Western Stories, compiled by Cooper Edens, caught my eye because I'd recently recommended a western novel for YA readers. Plus, I've wondered in the past if kids would read western.
Chronicle Books publishes a lot of art books, including art board books.
Then back while I was on vacation (can you believe I'm still talking about that?), I bought a copy of that week's Sunday New York Times, a treat that goes back to my college days and one that I rarely have time for. That issue included an article called Hapless Boy Wins Eager Friends, about the popularity of the Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney. I've only just read the article because I was on retreat from all kid reading while I was on vacation.
I have not yet read any of the Wimpy Kid books because they're written in diary format, and I have trouble getting enthused for reading those kinds of books. However, I hear a lot about them when I go into schools. Kids love them. The diary format doesn't bother them one bit.
I took a sabbatic from reading kids' books while I was on vacation. And, yet, three of the books I finished have a kid connection of one sort or another.
For instance, On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith has what I would call a thematic connection to YA. On the Wrong Track is the second in the Holmes on the Range series, Western mysteries set in the 1890s. Our narrator is twenty-year-old Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer, a cowboy who wanders with his twenty-seven-year-old brother Gustav "Old Red."
Seems pretty remote from twenty-first century YA readers, doesn't it? Well, the thing is, Gustav wants to be more than an illiterate cowpoke of few words. He wants to be a deducifier like his hero, Sherlock Holmes. And his little (though physically quite enormous) brother, Otto, wants to write up their adventures and publish them like Dr. Watson did Holmes'.
Though these two red-headed brothers are twenty-somethings, they seem younger (to the extent that people who are handy with guns and foul language can seem young) because they're trying to determine who and what they're going to be. In this book, they run into a burned out, dime novel hero who is not what he once was and maybe never was. They have to deal, each in his own way, with a young, very intertriguing, woman. They are confronted with disappointment and all kinds of road blocks in pursuing their goals.
I'm not saying that On the Wrong Track is a YA book, but it deals with issues that are common in YA novels and that should have appeal for YA readers.
I also think that On the Wrong Track is a good historical novel. Many historical novels for younger readers are what I'd describe as unbalanced. A lot of attention has been given to the historical setting but characters are often underdeveloped or cliched and plots are weak. My own guess is that children's and YA historical fiction is viewed as being educational. Such books are supposed to teach something about the period and are given a pass on other elements.
The Holmes on the Range books, however, provide a strong setting, terrific characters who are at home in that setting, and real plots. Okay, a lot of those terrific characters use realisitic, coarse language, so you might not want to be the adult who hands off one of these things to a delicate twelve year old. But mid-teens will have heard it all before, and a good historical mystery could open their minds to the opportunities historical novels offer.
Last night I introduced Stardust to the Swedes and did a Q&A after. Today I was interviewed by the Swedish press, then did a book-signing, and then I was given the "Finn the Giant" Award. In the crypt of the Cathedral at Lund. Beautiful live music was played, the legend of Finn the Giant was retold, and I was made the second person, following the unfollowable Terry Gilliam in 2005, to be honoured with the award.
In addition to a scroll, and flowers, I was given an amazing piece of art as my Award -- a portrait of me as a Saint, of sorts, all framed and ready to hang.
And then I left in the rain for the airport, happy to have met so many nice people and wishing I could stay longer in Lund.
....
Right. Here are the details of the upcoming Hay Festival London event...
Tuesday 2 October, 6pm
Neil Gaiman in conversation with Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian
The Criterion, Piccadilly
Book signing following the event.
The film of Stardust premieres in London on Wednesday 3 October. We have a pair of tickets to the premiere: all ticket-holders to the Hay Festival event at The Criterion will be entered into a draw and the winner announced at the book signing.
Tickets £5
Book at http://www.hayfestival.com/ or on 0870 990 1299.
Probably worth mentioning that the Criterion seats 600 people, which is slightly less than the last event in London, a year ago, so if you want to be sure that you can come, get tickets early.
This just came in from Japan...
Dear Neil
I am a Japanese fan who is dying to see Japanese release of Star Dust, coming this October. This is not exactly a question, but do you know about the special menues are available at Pascal Caffet and Shiseido Parlour (Both are famous sweets shops in Japan) in Yokohama Takashimaya while the department store is having photograph exhibition of Star Dust? Those menues are Star Dust Sweets Set (Pascal Caffet) and Star Dust Parfait (Shiseido Parlour).
http://www.takashimaya.co.jp/yokohama/new3/index.html
Anyone who eats the menu will get a chance to win a pair of tickets of Star Dust. As your fan, I am wondering if I should take two hour trip to Yokohama to try both menues. (^^)
Kominami Mie
Hullo. Only if you like parfait and sweets, I would have thought. (I loved the website you linked to -- I'd not seen the Japanese Stardust poster before, and it makes me strangely happy that it has the Ghosts on it.)
Also, from it I learned that there's a whole Japanese Stardust website at:
http://www.stardustmovie.jp/top.html
In addition to which, late this afternoon I was told that...
On Friday, the 21st of September, at 6:30 in Japan, I will be doing a signing, at
Kadokawa Shoten
2-13-3 Fujimi,
Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo
102-8177
Japan
(This is my publisher's office, by the way, not a bookshop. They were kind enough to agree to let me do a signing because I told them that people had been writing in to my blog from Japan and asking when I'd sign their books. So if you're in Japan, please come...)
...
Hi Neil
I thought you and your readers might like to know that the Mitch Benn podcast featuring an interview with you is now online - http://www.mitchbenn.com/podcasts/
Lena
Oh good. (I am now slightly less travel-weary than when I did the interview with Mitch, for those who worry about that sort of thing.)
...
Jonathan Ross's In Search of Steve Ditko documentary is broadcast in the UK this Sunday, on BBC4, and you can read what Jonathan has to say about it at http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2169000,00.html
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backed!