By Matthew Jent
The Rise of Aurora West
Written by JT Petty and Paul Pope
Art by David Rubin
Published by First Second
“You don’t have to attack what’s attacking you.”
At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Paul Pope appeared on a panel called “Middle Grade Extravaganza,” which discussed comics for a younger audience. Younger than the grown-ups who are currently buying superhero comics, at least. A young fan approached the mic during the Q&A and he asked how Pope got the idea for Battling Boy, the long-awaited original graphic novel released by First Second last year.
Pope responded immediately that he wanted to serve an audience that modern comics have left behind. “I have nephews who were your age,” he said, “and they thought it was cool I was making comics, but they can’t see most of it. It’s geared toward adults. I wanted to write the best superhero for people your age, so they don’t have to keep going back to Batman, who is 75 years old, and Spider-Man, who is middle-aged.”
The Rise of Aurora West, a prequel/spinoff to Battling Boy, expands the world of Arcopolis and the monster fighters who try to keep that megalopolis safe. Arcopolis as a nightly curfew that attempts to keep kids safe from the monsters (quite literally, they are goblin-faced, spaghetti-armed creatures with razor-sharp teeth) who prowl the dark alleys. Aurora West is a teenage monster hunter trained by her father, Batman-stand-in Haggard West, a super-rich adventurer with a face-fitting mask, high tech gadgets, and a Westmobile. In Battling Boy, Haggard is dead and Aurora is left to battle monsters on her own. In Rise, Aurora is still being trained by her father to, in his words, “make her strong enough to survive when I’m gone.”
Though set in the same world, Aurora West has a tone than the action heavy, magic-t-shirt story of Battling Boy. Aurora is not the strongest fighter or the surest of foot, but she’s got an investigative mind. She notices details others miss, even her father, who is “Arcopolis’ Wiliest Detective.” She plays squab at school (a game that seems to involve mallets and baseball bats, but not necessarily a ball?), practices “anti-mandible kenpo” with Ms. Grately (the Wests’ version of Alfred Pennyworth), and ignores (or doesn’t notices) flirtatious asides from Hoke, a boy from school she brings along on illicit investigations. As Aurora and Hoke look for clues in a library, his whispered “you’re so pretty” is a welcome reminder — right before the story kicks into creepy/action/conclusion mode — that this is still a story about kids, intended for an audience about that the same age or younger.
Aurora West can be read and enjoying without any foreknowledge of Battling Boy. It’s clearly established from the start that Arcopolis is a city with a monster problem, and that Haggard West is a Batman-figure with doom in his future. In Haggard’s case, the event from his past that’s made him the grim avenger he is today is the death of his wife — and Aurora’s mother. But Aurora is clearly our main character. She’s learning how to fight monsters, but more importantly, she’s learning when to listen to her mentors and when to trust her instincts. She’s learning to ask why there are monsters in Arcopolis, and discovering there might be more to their motivations besides madness and appetite.
Written by Pope with JT Petty, Aurora West is illustrated in black-and-white by David Rubin. Rubin’s work resembles a wonderful hybrid of Pope, Jeff Smith, Ren & Stimpy’s John Kricfalusi (those scrunched faces, that sweat!), and a pinch of Charles Burns. He employs great visual effects — the glare of light that obscures the face of Aurora’s mother the first time we see her, the thought balloon turning gears when Aurora puts something together in her head — and every page really works as a page. They are clearly constructed moments of story. Whether that comes from a tight script from Petty & Pope or from Rubin’s storytelling sensibilities — or both — it makes for an engagingly page-turning read, and it makes me think of Pope’s own masterwork (in my own opinion, at least), THB. Like THB, the art of Aurora West balances sci-fi action with adolescent drama, and while it gets spooky, it never stops being fun. Rubin’s monsters go from silly to strange to scary without losing any of their power, and when, late in the book, a strange creature steps from the shadows that is itself unsure whether it is a monster, a ghost, or something else altogether, I found myself looking around my apartment nervously. That’s a testament to Rubin’s work with mood and shadow just as much — if not more — as Petty & Pope’s words.
Zachary Clemente spoke to Paul Pope about Aurora West at NYCC, and Pope said that Aurora’s influences are H.P. Lovecraft and Boris Karloff Universal Monster movies, providing the flip side to Battling Boy’s wellspring of Jack Kirby, Moebius, and Miyazaki. Aurora West also speaks to something else Pope mentioned in that SDCC panel: that he’s writing to himself as a younger person.
The Rise of Aurora West is about a girl being propelled out of adolescence and into young adulthood, discovering that maybe her father doesn’t have all the answers, and that the imaginary friend she half-remembers from her youth might not have been so imaginary after all. It deepens a world of new mythologies introduced in Battling Boy and proves that there is a way to create new superhero comics, for a younger audience, without having to use the same old corporate characters of decades past.
Haggard West might be doomed, but Aurora is on the rise.
by Zachary Clemente
As the first day of New York Comic-Con came to close and exhibitors began shutting down their booths, I conducted my third interview with acclaimed cartoonist Paul Pope. This time we discussed his new entry in his Battling Boy series with First Second: The Rise of Aurora West, co-written by J.T. Petty and illustrated by David Rubín. Pope is an accomplished cartoonist, his published works including 100%, The One-Trick Ripoff, Escapo, Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid and is the recipient of multiple Eisner awards. It was a pleasure to speak with Pope again; you can find the first two interviews here and here.
Comics Beat: Paul, have you had a chance to wander the floor or are you only here for the bits you need to be here for?
Paul Pope: That’s the unfortunate thing about working on this side of things, you don’t go as a far anymore. But whatever, it’s not I’m Samuel L. Jackson, I don’t need to sneak in wearing a costume or anything.
CB: So The Rise of Aurora West just came out, how’s the reception been for that so far?
PP: I don’t want to say surprisingly, but I’m very happy to say it’s been very positive. When it came out last Wednesday [9/30] I went out to the west coast and promptly got sick because the tour schedule can be punishing, especially when you’re in airports and schools and you’re not sleeping – it all caught up to me eventually. I was out there for APE but I just couldn’t finished the tour unfortunately, they sent me back and when I got home I slept for 2 days straight. I’ve been rescheduling with all the places I couldn’t get to, figuring out the best to time to get back soon. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a loss.
CB: With Aurora West, you’re choosing to let this world [of Battling Boy] into other creators’ hands. How is the process of – I don’t want to say “sacrifice” – collaboration within this world that you’ve been working on alone for so long?
PP: I talked to Mike Mignola about this not too long ago. [...] You know what he’s done with Hellboy has been great because he’s been able to invite other creators. It was pretty early on that it was looking like Battling Boy was going to be a hit, or at least it would warrant a second series. Since I’m still working on the second book and now promoting it, they asked if I had any ideas and I said we should do a series on Haggard West and Aurora – fill in all the gaps that are implied in the first book as I finish the second book, periodically leave town and come back again.
CB: So not only is it wise for world-building but also strategically a good thing for you.
PP: Yeah, also there is a larger backdrop to the characters and to the world; like, the monsters come from somewhere. In the Aurora series, we getting more of a sense of the mystery of where the monsters come from. It’s more of a pulp adventure.
CB: I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt very rooted in manga with the printing format and art style.
PP: Well, J.T. understands horror and he gets pulp. David Rubín, like myself, comes from a sort of internationalist style and he likes manga a lot. He was able to keep it within a spectrum of style and approach that’s similar to mine and yet still be his own.
CB: It’s rare to see a very successful treatment of somebody else’s work by another artist who can inhabit both styles at once.
PP: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. He’s really fast too, which is great – he’s kicking my ass at the moment, I have to admit. I’m really happy with the results.
CB: Getting into the themes of the book, something I liked was taking the tropes of the “science” [super] hero idea and the consequence and responsibility of power. Haggard provided for this city for so long, when he turned inward, the city couldn’t handle itself. I found that best discussed in the scene with man on the bridge. How did this theme of power and consequence form?
PP: Well, it was one of the things J.T. and I talked about. I went in with my core idea based on the big, super-bible we wrote – we meaning me – for Battling Boy. We started talking about what the reality would be like, having your children stolen and we decided to try to do something where Haggard gets shaken out of his state of depression by having to help another father. I thought it was a good emotional bit – and it’s something we don’t typically see. [...] In Battling Boy, it’s a little more breezy and focused on the main five or six characters. You see more in the second book about other citizens, but for the most part it’s just Battling Boy, Aurora, and the city planners.
The Rise of Aurora West
CB: So now we’re getting a larger scope of what’s going on in Acropolis and how it’s dealing with its problems?
PP: Yeah, and obviously Battling Boy, as the name implies, is designed to have lots of explosions and fights and all kinds of stuff like that. Whereas Aurora was more psychological.
CB: It almost felt like the two different sides of Batman books. One’s very detective-based and the other is very action-based.
PP: That was plan going into it, actually. It’s frustrating though. Same with the character Dad in Battling Boy - there were a couple of scenes that I had to write out of Battling Boy that had to do with Dad just kicking ass because for one, that could be its own thing later. I also didn’t want to distract from the core of the story of Battling Boy which was the Boy’s coming of age. In Aurora, it’s the same. Luckily her version of Dad is Haggard; we get to see him without his mask and we get to see him in a family setup.
CB: That leads into my next question which is a big part of both books: would you call Haggard a good father?
PP: That’s a good question, you could ask the same of Dad. I think one of the things that attracted me to writing a story like this was thinking about how being a superhero or war god doesn’t leave you time to raise your kids – you’ll be busy. I’m interested in, fascinated and haunted by that idea of child soldiers. You hear about those types of things in Somalia; to have your child taken away from you. That’s something I find very sympathetic with Aurora and that’s something I wanted to explore with her character – how does she remain innocent?
CB: When we last talked, you said that you had things to say to children with Battling Boy; would you see Aurora as a continuation of that?
PP: One thing people seem to be picking up on with Aurora is that they’re really responding to her as a strong, female lead. She’s a teenage girl; she’s not a sexualized character, she’s not helpless; she’s a sidekick or protégé, but she’s got her own ideas and she does her own things. That’s kind of what her character requires and that’s the kind of personality the daughter of Haggard West would have. It’s been fun. [...] Battling Boy is more about–well, they’re both about abandonment in a sense, even though Battling Boy’s family is intact. I think Aurora’s story is more tragic, even though it’s kind of cloaked in this light, superhero, science-fiction setting. There’s archaeology and mysticism, but there isn’t any mythology in it. It’s the opposite in Battling Boy since he’s from the realm of gods.
The Rise of Aurora West
CB: I feel like the archaeology in Aurora is the other side of the coin for Battling Boy‘s mythology. Aurora has this historical scope that I find interesting.
PP: When we went in with the initial pitch for the series, Haggard’s an archaeologist before he’s a hero, and he discovers evidence of an ancient city under the city we know in Battling Boy, and there might’ve been another Battling Boy. The kid is kind of a feral character – it’s implied that Battling Boy has siblings. Imagine, Dad is like a war-god, so he’s probably prolific in line with a lot of mythology. Like with Hercules and Zeus, they have tons and tons of kids. This god of war, god of conquest – he’s going to be busy fighting battles in the realm of gods, so he needs to have offspring to be able to send them to the realm of humans to take care of basically training-wheel problems. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the background that’s coming out as the series develops.
CB: You touched on how the book came about, but how was the process of sharing the writing and where did duties lie?
PP: We did a sort of back and forth. It was his script and I gave him the liberty to write the voice of Haggard. [...] Part of my job now as being a story director as well as art director, so I don’t want to tell him how to do his job. He already knows what to do, he already knows how to direct movies and he writes video games and graphic novels – he’s really intelligent. It was more of us spending a few months really hammering out a story based on me saying “here’s what I really want to do.” We’d work on a core plot, knowing where the story begins and ends. At that point, I let him go and do his own thing. There were a few things though; his first draft was too violent because he likes horror. [...] There was some stuff with the characterization that I thought was a little off mark from what I was hoping for. Otherwise, I think the script came in really solid and it hit all the things I wanted. I try to give my collaborators room – I got that from Mignola because he told me that’s how he works with people.
CB: You did something like that with Vertigo anthology, Ghosts where you made the story but didn’t write the script.
PP: Oh you mean with Dave Lapham? Yeah, that was a good experiment. [...] I might be doing something else with another guy where I’m drawing something he’s gonna write. The way we worked on the space opera story was I said “here’s what I see: this mini-opera, there are the images I want.” Then we kicked around some ideas and he came up with some interesting stuff. That was more of a true collaboration in a sense because we wrote it together.
‘Treasure Lost’ in Ghosts #1
CB: How far are you willing to take this collaboration with the Battling Boy world?
PP: Well…it’s easier now after having worked on the film because there’s so many people involved; you can’t be a dictator when it comes to film. With the Battling Boy series that I have been writing and drawing, it’s pretty much my baby; I get minimal editorial input. With the colorist, Hilary Sycamore, she and I have a long conversation before she starts a large stretch of work. I always try to give her the sense of what I’m feeling for a scene. For example, the god realm is always in twilight, the human realm is always Mediterranean with terracotta and aquamarine colors, and the monster realm is like hell so it’s browns and reds.
The place I can be 100% myself is in Battling Boy and as we gradually expand on the series, I want to make sure to pick out people I like and respect and can work with and try to write or direct for their strengths, while being aware of their weaknesses. I think that’s the way to collaborate.
[Spoiler for Aurora West] CB: At the end of Aurora, the monster Coil mentioned that Aurora is his “animus” in the Jungian idea of one half of a whole inside the other and vice versa. Is that a discussion on the origin of monsters and their connection to the children in Battling Boy?
PP: [Laughs] You’re onto something there. Let’s just put it this way: the big boss that we see at the end of Battling Boy who Sadisto is working for is a scribble monster. It’s implied, by the time you hit Aurora, that these monsters might be very old, many of them aren’t even fully formed creatures yet. Yeah, there’s definitely a connection between that and that’ll be coming out as the series develops. Good call on that one.
CB: So, “The Fall of the House of West” – is that the second Battling Boy book itself?
PP: No, that’ll just be called Battling Boy 2. Ultimately, they’ll both be collected – I’m imagining Aurora as a two-parter: Rise of Aurora West and Fall of House West. It’s designed more around this kabuki stage set: tragedy and family. So act one is the rise and act two is the fall; that was definitely very conscious on our part. David wasn’t happy with the title at first; he thought, having come from film and a lover of westerns, he’s seen this type of thing a lot. Like with Battling Boy implies; it’s about a boy who’s fighting. Rise of Aurora West–first of all, it sounds alliterative and The Fall of the House of West has kind of a Shakespearean feel.
CB: I find that both Battling Boy and Aurora are well-described by their titles. As the stories utilize these touchstones in storytelling that people have come to expect, but works with them in such a unique way. The titles end up being evocative for their stories.
PP: Yeah, what’s really fun about it is meeting all these young readers. A lot of them are 10 or 12 years old and they’ve really never read comic books before. They might’ve read Adventure Time or Tintin, but this is the first time a lot of these kids, especially girls, are getting the sense of Kirby Krackle or Moebius. Certainly they know Ghibli’s movies like Spirited Away going into it, but for the first time they’re getting opened up to what we think of as Silver Age comics or awesome French comics from the 70’s.
The Rise of Aurora West
CB: We might be seeing a lot more of those Nausicaä boxed sets flying off the shelves soon.
PP: I love that film, though Laputa is my favorite, but it’s hard to say as there are so many good ones.
CB: I ultimately fall on Porco Rosso as my favorite.
PP: He [Hayao Miyazaki] said he made it for guys our age. Porco Rosso is a big influence on the coloring in Battling Boy.
CB: I totally see that. It’s all coastal, Mediterranean cities.
PP: I was Italy when I was writing Battling Boy, I just really fell in love with the south of Italy; the lighting and the colors, the way the sea looked on the Adriatic coast. At nighttime with the volcanoes in the distance, it’s so romantic and old. It fits with the ideas I had for Arcopolis; it isn’t like Berlin, 1945- dark and scummy. It’s this old and vibrant city that’s fallen on bad times.
CB: That makes sense with your work and European influences, I think. The recorded history there is just so much older.
PP: Even more so for Africa and Asia. That’s why, in Aurora, the analog for the oldest city is Egypt. I was thinking about all this stuff, but I wasn’t really able to put it across. Where Haggard lives in the city, his decor is very Pacific Northwest – it’s a lot of fun to draw.
CB: It’s got a very collector vibe to it, too.
PP: Yeah, something I noticed with some of the heroes from occult fiction, whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or Lamont Cranston – they collect a bunch of ancient artifacts and stuff. Indiana Jones is like that too, but he’s a thief.
CB: It has those classic Campbellian story elements; out of travel a hero is born.
PP: Actually, Haggard belongs to an explorers club like National Geographic and we’ll see more of those characters later. I’m going to do an annual portrait of Haggard with his compatriots, so in that sense, he’s a little like Doc Savage. Like in Buckaroo Bonzai, he’s got his gang if he needs a specialist in this or that.
CB: Wrapping up, other than Mignola’s “Hellboy-verse”, are there any other series with larger built-up worlds that have this kind of multi-thread publication structure that you’re inspired by?
PP: One big influence is definitely the RKO [Pictures] and Universal [Pictures] movie series from the 30’s and 40’s like Flash Gordon. [...] There’s always the classic Universal monster movies, German expressionism and early Soviet-era cinema; whether it’s Eisenstein or Fritz Lang – those are big influences. That’s the fun thing, in the same way that Battling Boy is full of my love of Kirby, Moebius, and Miyazaki, the same of true for Aurora. It’s like a flipped coin – the dark side like Boris Karloff, H.P. Lovecraft – these kind of things, it’s more of a vintage feel.
That works with J.T. because he directs horror movies; he’s writing The Walking Dead video game, I don’t know if you know that. He has a wicked sense of humor and a wicked sense of the wicked, and he also has two children. We got lunch a couple days ago after a signing and we had a long conversation; we got into some dark stuff. [In Aurora] monsters are kidnapping children and we started talking about some really gruesome stuff and it’s like “this is where it’s coming from.”
CB: Thank you very much Paul.
PP: Sure, thank you.
Paul Pope is an Eisner-winning cartoonist currently in Brooklyn, New York. He is actively working on his Battling Boy series with publisher First Second. You can find more of his work on his website.
By Kyle Pinion and Harper Harris
In one week, First Second will be producing the prequel to Paul Pope’s critically lauded and Eisner Award winning Battling Boy entitled The Rise of Aurora West. This new tale, co-written by Pope and J.T. Petty, features art by David Rubín and centers on the journey of Aurora West, daughter of Arcopolis’ pulp inspired hero: Haggard West, who seeks to uncover the mystery behind her mother’s death and to do so without her famous father discovering her mission. It’s a fascinating expansion on the mythos Pope laid out in the initial Battling Boy graphic novel, and we were fortunate enough to chat with Rubín regarding his work on this new title and what we can expect next from this rising talent.
Where did you get your start in the comics industry and was it based upon American comics or more of the European variety? Both?
I started to publish my work in 2001, first in some Spanish fanzines and magazines, and then with my first graphic novels, published in Spain by Astiberri editions. Astiberri works hard to sell my titles to other publishers in other countries, and now you can find my books in French, Italian, Czech, and soon in English too.
I like to mix the different traditions in my own work; American comics, European BD and Japanese manga. I like to read both, and both are reflected in my style.
What are your key influences as an artist?
From American comics: Jack Kirby (he’s my favorite author), Frank Miller, Alex Toth, Mike Sekowsky, John Romita Sr. & Jr., and Bob Oksner.
From European BD: JC Forest, Moebius, Peellaert, Blutch, and Hugo Pratt.
From Japanese Manga: Osamu Tezuka, Go Nagai, Shigero Mizuki, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Suehiro Maruo.
And some Spanish artists like Javier Olivares, Santiago Sequeiros, and Miguel A. Robledo.
But influences in my work aren’t provided only by comics; the music, the cinema, the painting, and other kinds of pop culture also influence my work.
What were some of your earlier projects during the beginning phases of your career?
“Dónde nadie puede llegar” was my first long project. It was a story of love, loss, and unhappy superheroes. It’s included in my first graphic novel with Astiberri: “El Circo del Desaliento”. It was published in France and in Italy, too.
“La tetería del oso malayo” was my second graphic novel with Astiberri. It’s a compendium of different short stories with a common link, the tearoom where those stories happen. It’s a very emotional and sad book.
And the third graphic novel of my early work was called “Cuaderno de Tormentas” and was published in Spain by Planeta DeAgostini. It’s a bizarre book about the search for inspiration, about the torturous way of creativity – much more darker and experimental than my previous books.
How did you end up getting your first works published, and who were you working with at the time?
In my early years as a cartoonist, I started the Polaqia collective with other artists.
At that time, none of us had published professionally, and the unique option for us was self publishing our work.
Polaqia collective existed from 2001 to 2011, and we published a lot of great stuff by ourselves and other artists like Dylan Horrocks, Miguel B. Nuñez, Juan Berrio, and a lot of artists from all over the world.
Several members of Polaqia are professional artists now, like the recently Eisner Awards nominated Emma Ríos (“Pretty Deadly,” Image) or José Domingo (“Adventures of a Japanese Businessman,” Nowbrow) and myself. Polaqia was the beginning for us.
At what point did you become a part of The Rise of Aurora West team? Were you a fan of Paul Pope’s work?
Yeah, I like Paul’s work so much! He’s one of the artists who influenced my work.
I remember that in the middle of 2013 – before Battling Boy came out — I’d received an e-mail from Paul in which he asked me if I’d want to collaborate with him and First Second in a spin-off of Battling Boy.
At that moment I was very busy working on my graphic novel Beowulf with Santiago García, but…Oh, Boy!…that kind of thing only happens once in a lifetime! And, of course, I said YES.
What was the working relationship like between yourself, Paul Pope and JT Petty? With whom were you in most constant contact during the development of the graphic novel?
We did some short but intense pre-production work at the beginning of the project. I made a lot of sketches of the characters, and they sent to me a lot of reference stuff like photos, old films and tv serials, etc…everything I needed for playing well with the new universe created by Paul.
But when I was starting to working on the pages, they gave me a lot of freedom. When I have a batch of pages, 20 or 30, in pencils, I sent it to JT, Paul and the staff of First Second. Everything that was said to me is “Oh, GREAT!” “WOW!!”…so I think that I’m a lucky guy!
JT always shows those pencil pages to his little daughter. She’s the real beta-tester of Aurora West’s books! And until this moment, everything I’ve sent works fine for her, haha!
With Paul Pope obviously being an artist himself, did the scripts already have pre-figured design concepts or did Pope and Petty give room for your own ideas?
It’s a team effort; I use some of Paul’s previous ideas in Aurora West and Paul used some of my ideas in Battling Boy 2.
Paul and JT’s script is very detailed, but they haven’t any problems with me including a lot of new ideas in it when I do the storytelling. They make my work easier!
Was this story always intended to be two volumes? Are you working on the second half already or will there be a significant break between the work on the two books?
Yes, Aurora West’s story was two volumes since the beginning.
And I’m already hard at work on the second volume. I’ve already finished more than 80 pages of penciled art.
I’ll be finished with book two for the end of January 2015…I think.
Will The Fall of the House of West dovetail with the plot of Battling Boy or will be it wholly separate?
“The Fall…” ends when Battling Boy begins, the four books –BB1&2 and AW1&2 – will make a single story, I think.
It’s not necessary for you to have already read Battling Boy to enjoy and understand the story of Aurora West, but if you already read Battling Boy, your experience like reader with The Rise of Aurora West is going to be more powerful.
What is your favorite aspect of being able to flesh out the world of Battling Boy? Do you have a particular addition of your own that you’re especially proud of? Is there a wrinkle or element that is very specifically “David Rubín”?
The Battling Boy universe is young and very unexplored as yet.
It’s a world that’s 100% Pope, yeah. But at the same time, that world only has the two hundred pages of Battling Boy, and that gives me a lot of leeway to play in it — and to provide it some of my ideas.
Arcopolis, the city where the action happens in Battling Boy and The Rise of Aurora West, are darker in Aurora West than in Battling Boy. It’s the same city, the same architecture, but it’s different. There are also plenty of new characters that I designed for the Battling Boy universe, like Medula and her gang of catfishmidgers, Croward, and a number of new monsters and humans, who all appear for the first time in The Rise of Aurora West.
Anyone who has read some of my own books could find a lot of references and similarities, and this the case because the world created by Paul is very rich and full of possibilities.
How would you compare Aurora and Battling Boy as heroes? What makes Aurora stand apart?
They’re some similarities between Battling Boy and Aurora; both are learning to be heroes, and both have a lot of doubts about themselves and their own fate.
But Battling Boy came from a fantastic world full of gods and heroes, a world where everything is possible, while Aurora grew up in a world with only one hero; her father, in a city under siege, full of monsters and menace.
And that makes a big difference in the personality of both.
All of the sound effects are drawn into the art rather than photoshopped in, was that a conscious choice for stylistic purposes?
I like to draw all these elements — the sound effects, the balloons — by myself. I think it gives a more organic look to the pages, and helps to make the timing more fluid than if you put this elements in a page with a computer in a post-production process, or if someone else puts them in.
I try to make them by myself in every one of my books. I think that is the best way.
Why black and white instead of fully colored pages? Was that an economic choice or a storytelling one?
That was an editorial decision. When I was asked to do this project, First Second had already decided that Aurora West’s book would have B&W final art.
But that editorial choice was good for my work, I think, because I had to go in different ways for my storytelling than if the book had been published in full color.
B&W requires much more of the artists. You must generate feelings in the reader with only one color ink, the same feelings that people feel in seeing full color art. To make that possible, you need to express more using storytelling.
What sort of challen
ges did you find in differentiating the various members of Sadisto’s gang?
Good question!! With color that is so easy; one blue, one red, one green…but in B&W, with these capes, everybody looks the same!
There are some tricks to make them distinguishable; if you look, each of them has different elements in their costumes. In addition, the acting not is the same for them all; Sadisto is more theatrical, more broad than the others, Coil is more strong and purposeful, etc…
What are your primary artistic techniques when working on a book like this? What kind of materials do you use?
I drew the storyboard for the book on little pieces of paper, then I scan the story and print a blue version in A4 paper size of the story pages. Then I make the final and draw over it, with a pencil.
When the pencil pages are done, I scan the result and print in blue in B4 size papers (a size between A4 and A3) and do my inks there, with a brushpen.
Inks done, I scan – again — the pages and includes the grey tones in Photoshop. I add some other additional details of the inks digitally, like the splatter of ink in some panels, etc…
There are other ways to draw a comic page, better, for sure, but this one works well for me. And you have two original pages of each page! One in pencils and one in inks!
You can see a graphic explication of my work process in Aurora West in my blog:
http://detripas.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/historia-de-una-pagina.html
The Rise of Aurora West has a very 1930’s Serial look, particularly in its Egyptian segments, but more or less throughout. Where does that come from? (as it signals a somewhat sharper turn from the Kirby-esque Battling Boy graphic novel)
Paul and JT wanted a 1930’s tv serial look for these sequences, a graphic atmosphere like Doc Savage or other pulp stories.
Paul sent me some chapters of 1930’s Flash Gordon serial, which is amazing, and I tried to get the tone of this type of work, old but fashionable, in the panel of these segments.
Those Egyptian sequences are flashbacks, which helps to that old fashioned-phantasmagoric atmosphere work just fine.
What was the most difficult segment of the script to illustrate? Additionally, what was the most fun part?
Both are the same part!! The long final sequence with the confrontation of Haggard and Aurora with Medula and Sadisto’s gang was my favorite.
It’s a long sequence, with a lot of action, a number of points of view, and mini sequences as well.
It has everything; tons of action and adventure, shootings, explosions, melee, hue-and-cry….and a lot of drama, surprises and emotional moments.
There were harder segments to illustrate, but, undoubtedly, this was the most fun!
As for other upcoming work, you have an adaptation of Beowulf coming. What is about Beowulf that attracts you as an artist, particularly for such an oft-told story? And with the English language release of The Hero (a re-telling of Hercules) coming through Dark Horse, do you have a particular affinity for mythological heroes and why?
I’ve liked mythology since I was a child; the gods were the first superheroes ever!
When I created The Hero, I had wanted to recover the emotions that I lived when I first read SH comics as a child — this pure emotion, these “bigger-than-life” stories.
That book is my love letter to the genre of superheroes, especially to Jack Kirby’s work.
But if I didn’t make a graphic novel about the nostalgia for the old superhero comics and pop culture; I’d make a book about myths, heroes, monsters, but with everything packed in the sad, visceral and very emotional drama of a human being.
My approach to Beowulf was more a coincidence than something I sought out.
I was reading in Santiago Garcia’s blog that his project of a Beowulf graphic novel with Javier Olivares was cancelled.
I was really angry when I saw that notice – I really WANTED TO READ that graphic novel! – and I immediately called Santiago and said to him: “Hey man, Beowulf can’t fall in oblivion! I’m going to draw it and make it a reality!!!”
Santiago accepted my offering and the rebirth of Beowulf project began!
When can we expect to see Beowulf in stores and do you have any other projects that you’d like to share any news about?
The English version of our Beowulf arrives at stores in 2015, published by Image Comics.
And as for future projects…by the moment I’m making a new graphic novel with high concept Sci-Fi and a scathing critique of the current political and economic system, with the spanish writer Marcos Prior. I think that will be finished by the end of 2015.
And in the meantime, I’m drawing a four issues mini-series for Boom! Studios, a completely new and original series.
You can purchase Battling Boy: The Rise of Aurora West in stores on September 30th.
can’t wait!