Interview conducted by A.K.
May 26, 2004
Hello, and welcome to my comic book interview.
How have you been? I’ve been good; retirement’s been swell. It’s given me more time to focus on my one true love: keno.
For those of you who may not know, I used to have a column at Moviepoopshoot called BREAKDOWNS, under my pen name “Chris Allen.” Eventually the constant hate mail I would receive -- e-mail after e-mail saying “Batman doesn’t want you having children, Chris Allen, and neither does Jesus” -- I’m a human being here. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I gave it all up -- the fame, the drugs, the women, the men, the drugs, the cars, the diamonds, everything, everything except for the drugs.
But like so many of you, I too have longed to do a “60-Minutes-esque investigative interview” of the type pioneered by Matt Brady or Jen Contino or Gay Talese. I too have dreamt of the GLORY!
So I sort of know these guys: writers IVAN BRANDON and MILES GUNTER, and artist ANDY MACDONALD. And they sort of made this comic book called NYC MECH. And IMAGE COMICS is sort of publishing it.
And they sort of came to me and said, “We have lives, but we know you don’t have one, so why don’t you spend some of those hours you waste pontificating on what comic creator you’d rather Fuck Marry or Kill, and write us an interview?” So: here we are. They wanted to promote their book. And I’ve always wanted to do an interview.
This is going to be a two-part Interview Spectacular. Today is all about them and their comic book or whatever. But next week will be all about keno and my surefire strategies for winning big at keno, so make sure to come back for that, high rollers.
TO BEGIN:
I have a little pet peeve about comic book interviews that I want to mention at the outset: Questions about some random dude’s stunningly boring childhood.
An example from a recent interview with Mark Chiarello from COMIC BOOK ARTIST. Mark Chiarello is the editorial art director at DC, as well as an incredible artist in his own right, and has had an important hand in any number of fascinating things at DC, including Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER series and the upcoming SOLO book. So, what does CBA ask?
CBA: Did you watch a lot of television [as a child]?
MARK: I watched a ton of TV. I’d been a TV freak for much of my life. I watch very little now, but I find myself very nostalgica for the shows we all watched when we were kids. The Munsters, Batman, The Brady Bunch, F-Troop.
CBA: Any particular affinity for the Twilight Zone?
CBA: Dark Shadows?
CBA: You watched the New York City TV stations? WPIX, WOR and Metromedia?
So, I’ll get to the NYC MECH team’s undying love for DARK SHADOWS in a moment, but first, we’re going to start with the “pitch,” what this NYC MECH comic is and why you need it, as quickly told to us by co-writer Mister Ivan Brandon.
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IVAN BRANDON: NYC MECH is an infinite number of stories featuring an infinite number of personalities in a completely modern and realistic New York City. The one difference, however is unlike your friends who dropped out of NYU, our cast is composed entirely of robots. Not laser-beam shooting robots with antennae, but rather DKNY wearing city dwellers that carry a .45 magnum and a pack of Newports. (Or any other of an infinite number of personal details, insert MAC lipstick or wall street power-tie, create your own robot here)
QUESTION: So…like… do any of you have herpes?
MILES GUNTER: NYC Mech is happily disease-free.
IVAN: But we’re hopeful.
ANDY MACDONALD: …test results usually take seven business days, right?
QUESTION: Okay. Awesome. Fuck, this interviewing stuff is harder than it looks… Okay, let’s start at the beginning.
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QUESTION: You decide you want to make the comic books for a living. What was it like when you said that out loud for the first time? “I want to make comic books for a living.” Christ, were you drunk? Who talks like that? Did anyone yell “Sissy!” and punch you in the mouth? And what did you do after you had made that decision? How do you become “trained” to write a comic? To draw one? Was it like ROCKY 4 when Rocky went to the Arctic Tundra to train for his fight with Ivan Drago, or was it like ROCKY 3 where Rocky just took some steroids and humped a donkey? Does anyone still say “humped?” What happened to that word? And who do you talk to when you decide you want to throw your life away? Did your guidance counselor cross herself and scream something like “Rectus… Dominus!!!”? Did you talk to any comic book pros? Were they nice? Was anyone mean? Let’s drag someone’s name through the mud. Hell, feel free to make something up, like how Chris Claremont would wear a fake moustache and in the middle of talking to young fans, he’d randomly rip it off then point at you and whisper “That’s what I’m going to do to you, Little Man. C’est la vie!”
MILES: I think it can be a ROCKY 4 type situation: on the outset, you’re the underdog in the wilds of cold-as-fuck Russia, training in a shack while under watch of armed guards. Part 3 comes later when you have to defend your rep against the new breed. I set out to write comics as the result of a religious experience I had making chocolate fondue Rorschach blots on the floor of my apartment in Savannah. It was a Boba Fett blotter type situation.
IVAN: Honestly I never quite said it aloud… at the time I’d been moderately successful in business so one thing that really helped me a lot starting out was being able to think at my own pace without worrying about a pitch or a deadline. It gave me a lot of time to hone and
tweak until overall I was at least in a place where I felt confident as a starting point… where I still had a lot to learn but the overall response to my work was positive, and people were willing to pay to publish it. As for pros… Chris Claremont never yelled at me. I’ve never been one to ask for much advice, so I’ve never been spit on or anything. I once saw Lou Ferrigno change his pants on the convention floor though… my inner child has never been the same.
MILES: My first meetings with pros were Paul Pope and Peter Kuper, both of whom were extremely gracious and inspiring. Chris Bachalo was a saint to me. There was this one dude who was a total dickhead. I'm not gonna entertain you with names cause he could show up some day and knife me and I don't have time for that. Let's just say he doesn't work anymore.
QUESTION: For Andy, was it a lot of walking up to pros with those black zipper-bag things and having pros try to shit on your heart? I see kids doing that and just wonder how many times some kid’s flipped out and tried to punch Jim Lee or whoever. That just looks SOUL-CRUSHING. Also, where do you buy one of those black zipper bag things? I imagine it’s a giant Store of Sadness… like, Target, basically. Did creepy old comic book pros ever sexually harass you by pointing at your black zipper-bag thing and asking you if you’d ever heard of Erica Jong and the “zipless fuck?” Why are creepy old comic book pros Erica Jong fans, do you think? Do you think Erica’s a pretty name or do you think its creepy that they made a girl-name out of Eric? Personally, I think Erica is a very pretty name.
ANDY: I think of the art stores where you buy spankin’ new portfolios as clean and new and fresh and full of possibility. It’s like any other horror story though, where the story opens with the move into the bright and shiny new house so full of hope for the “fresh start” and the “new beginning”, and it’s not until a few days later that somebody gets pushed through the woodchipper or Richard Moll comes back to life wanting to kill you or take you back to “Charlie” or whatever. But I’ve never actually used my zippered portfolio out of my fear of Richard Moll and Erica Jong fans. (Coincidentally, I didn’t become aware of Erica Jong until
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shortly after I drew my first ever comic page. Crazy.) But no, I did a ton of mailings for some reason. I lived in the middle of nowhere at the time and somehow got my hands on a bunch of my favorite artist’s mailing addresses and sent them samples to crit (which only now do I realize how obnoxious that was of me and I retroactively, yet sincerely, apologize to any I may have intruded on). It was never THAT soul-crushing though, because in the back of my mind I kind of knew what I was slacking on, and these guys were more or less making the rest of my mind say “c’mon, you’re not fooling anybody with this” so it just made me bear down that much more.
QUESTION: For Ivan and Miles, gosh, it must’ve just been the most pathetic thing in the world to have been you. I mean, I see those message boards where people are like “I need an artist to draw my comics,” and I just feel bad, like, “You Poor Deluded Bastard.” How did you keep your morale up? Did you ever just stare at a mirror long enough to cry? Was it depressing? How did you get to the point you were working with artists? And was it scary when the time came to actually work with one? Was it like when you were a teenager and you’d be in a bathroom by yourself, enjoying the evil wonders of pubescence, thinking “How am I going to do this when there’s a girl around?” Would you see yourself at that moment in the mirror and start crying? What’s with you two with the crying and the mirrors??? Is it like that Barbara Streisand movie THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES? Which Face are you?
MILES: I've always gotten a lot of joy out of making comics. I’ve never looked at it as a chore. I do this to make myself happy. I started making comics while I was in art school. I hooked up with all these bad dudes and we did our own crazy strips for kicks. I think like attracts like. That’s brought me into contact with some incredible artists that I’ve had the privilege to work with and learn from.
IVAN: Honestly, I hear a lot of writers complain about this, finding artists for creator-owned work…but it’s not something I’ve really had a lot of trouble with so I guess I’m the wrong guy to ask. As for working with someone for the first time… I’ve got an artistic background so I’m probably a little more visual than some with my script process…I’m pretty confident with all of that but there are always variables that can make it unpredictable. Beyond “are they going to get it right?” there’s the more frightening question of whether or not the artist will like what you’ve written or to work your teenage date analogy… will the artist realize they’re out of my league and dump me? It can be very humbling working with some of the talents I’ve been lucky enough to run into.
QUESTION: For Ivan and Miles, at some point, didn’t you ever just think “Fuck this, I’ll draw my own comics? I don’t need any of you bastards!” Aren’t you afraid that no matter how hard you work, your careers will always be dependant on some freak-o artist with delusions of grandeur and/or/e.g. Andy Macdonald wanting to draw your stories instead of Scott Lobdell’s? Or were you aware of a predilection among “critics” to declare that the only “true” comic book “artists” are writer-artists? Do you feel like the best you’ll ever be is second class citizens? When you were alone in that bathroom, staring at the mirror and crying, did you ever, you know, get turned on by your own reflection then try to make out with your mirror-self? Gross.
MILES: I love collaboration so comics is a good fit for me. I can’t draw but I have an art background so I try to be as visual as possible.
IVAN: One of the most fulfilling parts of the job is seeing pencils e-mailed in every day, the stuff I imagine taking life in ways I never would have pictured. Part of the thrill also is getting the artist into an idea, seeing the smile when we’re on the same page on an idea. Andy adds a lot more than just the art here, he works the story with us and every part of the concept. I get a call every day or I call him to trade ideas on how we can make the whole thing better. There’s a bigger whole here I could never have by myself.
QUESTION: How much of trying to break in is creating mini-comics or that sort of thing, creating your own material, and how much is creating pitches for editors on pre-existing characters? Are there a lot of mini-comics you guys have made I’ve never seen? Like, is your apartment just full of your rejected CLOAK AND DAGGER proposals? Do you ever dress up like Cloak for Halloween, but then not wear anything under the Cloak? Or do you ever dress up like Dagger, but not wear anything under the … Dagger? Wait, what does that even mean? It sounds like I’m talking about some sort of scrotum-glove. Do they make scrotum-gloves? Where can I buy one? Target?
IVAN: I’m pretty useless on a lot of this… the vast majority of what I’ve written for comics has been published, so I don’t really have a big pile of anything but empty cigarette packets around the house. I have miscellaneous film and prose projects about (tons unfinished, sadly), but not a lot of unpubbed comics work. I do, however, wear a scrotum-glove.
MILES: I’ve got about 120 pages of finished comics I did between '95 and 1999. I started with the intention of doing Slave Labor Graphics style shit but I was never able to score a gig. But I was a stubborn kid and stuck with it. The last time I dressed up for Halloween was as the Joker in ARKHAM ASYLUM. Thank god no pictures exist.
ANDY: This isn’t really answering the question, but I think everybody should make mini-comics. It’s just a lot of fun.
QUESTION: Were you dealing with editors? What’s it like to deal with an editor when you’re, well, no one? When you’re Joe Wannabe? Is there a lot of sucking up? Did you make any mistakes? I know as a fan my attitude is usually that an editor is either the person who fucks up a comic I’m enjoying or the moron who can’t figure out how to click on spell-check. What did it take for you to no longer have such an attitude yourselves? Hugs? Did it take hugs? Where did they touch you? Show me on the doll where they touched you.
MILES: It's important to do things that will make an editor remember you. Like sending proposals in envelopes made of green shag carpet, or sending them porn or Andy Capp hot fries. I remember talking to Axel [Alonso] in San Diego back in ‘98; he told me about this romance anthology he was putting together. So I sent him these Valentines cards, each with a one-line story pitch. Not that it worked but I did eventually end up scoring a gig with him on WEIRD WAR TALES. Also -- editors tend to be extremely over-worked. I know there's no way in hell I could deal with all the shit they have to on a daily basis. As someone submitting, its important to be considerate of their situation but remain persistent. Tact comes in handy…
ANDY: What’s tact?
IVAN: My experience with editors is that they always leave the bar before I do.
QUESTION: ANDY: How do you get good at drawing pages, laying out pages, etc. without having pages to lay out or pages to draw? How do you get experience if you have no work, and how do you get work if you have no experience? Were you drawing from, I don’t know, sample scripts? Where do you find sample scripts -- the Internet? When you’d search for sample scripts, how did you avoid the temptation to just spend that time looking for horrifyingly grotesque porn like that thing of the girl fucking a table leg? Or were you making up your own stories? Did your own stories involve a girl fucking a table leg? For the love of all that is decent, why on Earth would you ever fuck a table leg??? Did you sign up for Joe Kubert Correspondence School classes? If so, did you ever fall in love with Joe Kubert and draw hearts all over your Kubert School homework? I guess you couldn’t write your first name and his last name (ala your “married” name) because that’d be “Andy Kubert,” which… that’d be kind of incestuous or just plain wrong somehow, you know? Did you brag to your friends that Joe Kubert was your “special pen pal?” I’ve seen you say in interviews that you paint. Did you ever see how successful Alex Ross was getting and just say to yourself, “Fuck this pencil shit -- I will paint you, Wolverine, and then I will dress like you, and then I will 0wnzered all the fanboys!” Did you see that photo of him in that “Halloween” get-up of his?
ANDY: I drew sample pages off of scripts from Marvel and DC for a little while. That didn’t last too long though, because after a few times I didn’t see the pages really going anywhere. Mini-comics and "indie" stuff became very appealing to make.
QUESTION: Eventually, two of you “broke in,” and started to build resumes. Miles co-created BASTARD SAMURAI, had a story with Marcelo Frusin in that WEIRD WAR TALES book alongside Jim Lee, Paul Pope and Garth Ennis, worked on a Hellboy spin-off one-shot with Mike Oeming. Ivan and Miles both worked on the recent TERMINATOR 3 series, and Ivan also has Beckett's GENE FUSION and RUULE with Mike Hawthorne, etc. Meanwhile, poor Andy descended into drugs and despair and a black abyss of envy and jealousy. Is that about accurate?
MILES: Yeah, I also did some apocalyptic action porn with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City artist Jacen Burrows. Someday we’ll finish what we started.
IVAN: That sounds right. Andy also watched a lot of porn.
ANDY: “Watched” a lot of porn?
QUESTION: What came as a surprise to you after you’d had your first couple big books out there? Were you expecting the world to come to a stop and say “Oh my, who is THAT promising young lad?” Was it emotionally devastating when the world didn’t stop to bow to your greatness? Did you ever just have a fit where you started screaming out “I wrote TERMINATOR 3 comics. What’d you ever do???” Or… after having pitched book after book, finally getting something out there, was it just like … un-blue-balling?
MILES: I don’t think people realize how fucking insanely impossible it is to get work writing comics. I had some disappointing experiences. I spent a year writing proposals for Chris Claremont when he was the VP at Marvel. I never got any work out of it, but that experience made me a better writer. I could rattle off stories till I’m blue in the face but who fugging cares? Your failure sharpens you.
QUESTION: So, you come up with NYC MECH. Take me to that moment. Or was it a single moment? Were you all in a room when one of you said “Robot” and another said “New York” and the third said “Stop- you’re both right?” What kind of room was it? Was there a toilet? Did one of you force Andy Macdonald to pee sitting down?
MILES: It was a totally uneventful single moment. I think I was vacuuming or doing the dishes. I called Ivan at the bar. He liked the idea and we were off...
IVAN: There was probably a toilet in the bar.
ANDY: Hmmm…I think I was…Yeah, I was naked, shivering in that dark abyss thingy you were talking about with the drugs and the despair and the whatnot. The nurse said I had a phone call, et voila!
QUESTION: Was there ever fighting at the outset? Like did anyone ever just say “I want the comic to be about little blue creatures who live in a mushroom village and fight Gargamel, only with robots?” Have you guys fought a lot about anything? When one of you suggests something incredibly stupid, how do you deal with that? I actually think a mushroom village is kind of a cool idea. I’d love to live in a mushroom. I’d wake up and chew on my walls until I was ready to start the day. Seems like a win-win proposition to my mind. What sort of name is Gargamel? It sounds like a tooth disease. Did those fascist Crest soldiers ever fight Gargamel? Were the Crest soldiers an influence on NYC MECH?
MILES: No fighting. We've disagreed at times but that's part of the process. It's not like we're on the same wavelength finishing each others sentences. Part of the fun is that we have different approaches.
IVAN: Conceptually, getting the pieces of the book together took some back and forth, but we’re all friends so we talk well and respect each other’s ideas. It’s a pretty organic process, we know where we’re going for the most part but there’s a lot of room to maneuver into strange territory and I think that’s what really gets us going every month, when one of us throws a crazy situation into the mix and the story just flows.
QUESTION: But you’re creative guys, right, so shit, you probably have all sorts of concepts occurring to you all the time, right? Like, “what if ham sandwiches ruled the Earth?” Bam, that’s a concept. That could be your next comic if you wanted it to be. NYC HAM? What is it about THIS time that you said, “That’s it. That’s the one.” When was the moment you realized that you wanted to go all the way on this one, that this was the one to bet the family farm on?
MILES: I’m always thinking of story in finite terms: three issues, four issues, eight issues...But I always wanted to do something that could be ongoing. I knew from the get go and from my collaborator’s reactions that this was the girl.
IVAN: Ideas come all the time, but they’re not all ongoing and let’s face it, they’re not all mass-market friendly. Our industry has some tastes they’re familiar with and this was the sort of thing that was completely different from what they were used to but sort of parallel to the point it’d be easy to digest. The other thing is… staying on any one project can be a burden… like anything in life if things aren’t just so the situation can get boring or ugly. Personally I just saw this as something I wouldn’t get tired of, something I wouldn’t regret working on week after week.
ANDY: Same here. The millions of possibilities that the three of us see in this project are way too enticing.
QUESTION: So, you’ve said in those awful, awful other interviews that you designed the book around Andy Macdonald. What is it about that kid that when you look at him, you think to yourselves “This whole city is filled with robots.” Fuck, is that supposed to be a compliment? Did Andy ever just scream out “You’re a robot- that’s who’s a robot; you are!!!” Why do you see robots and not ninjas? I remember seeing some of his ninja sketches in some WHEELCHAIR RIOTS or ALTERED REALITY/CACTUS FUSION anthologies, I think. Why not NYC NINJA? NYC HAM, anyone?
MILES: It was Andy's ability to draw so many different kinds of cool fucking robots that birthed the idea. I’m saving the ninjas for a project with my pal Neil Vokes.
IVAN: Andy and I have worked on other things, from cowboys to super-strong pre-teen boxing kids. His eye and style are incredibly versatile and you’ll see him draw thousands of different ideas in the future. This was the one idea that really had legs- really could go on and on without getting stale.
QUESTION: For Andy -- you’re a guy who draws. They come over to you and say “Robots in NYC.” Let’s say Miles comes to you and he says “Ivan and I will spend a couple hours a month knocking out a script then we’re headed to the beach, for laughing and cavorting and more laughing, while you spend the rest of the month full-time in some dank sweatbox drawing your ass off on our ‘vision’ like you were our serf.” And you say “SOLD!” What??? How did you get talked into that? Are you retarded? Or, I guess to put it more delicately, what was it about this concept that made you so fucking retarded?
ANDY: The concept and the suggestions we were batting around of where it would go hooked me. Visually and conceptually it’s full of the stuff I love working on. And that’s just the kind of love that makes one retarded. Retarded like a fox.
QUESTION: You’re trying an ongoing series? Do you have a definite ending in mind? Why did this concept feel like an ongoing series concept, and not something you’d want to do as a limited series and move on from? Can you imagine going 300 issues like Dave Sim? If so, at what issue do you think you’ll go completely fucking crazy? What kind of crazy are you hoping you go -- crazy essays about the Male Void crazy or do you just want to go full-on bag lady crazy? If full-on bag-lady crazy, would you keep any comic books in your bags? I think comic books are bad-ass.
MILES: Well, I hope that now you've been to New York you understand why this book is an ongoing. We don't have an end in mind. We're just gonna keep doing it until we get sick of it or each other. What we don't want to do is to create too much of a preconceived expectation for the reader. That's one of the things I think the information age has really killed: the ability to enjoy art without some kind of preconceived hype around it. I hate that there is a whole subculture of people dedicated to knowing everything about a movie before it comes out. There's a lot to be said for having no idea what something is before you read it/see it.
IVAN: That said, we have a pretty clear goal and vision but how we get there changes from day to day, even for us.
QUESTION: Or take me to when you were figuring out that first story. Arguably the most important issues you’ll ever have to write of the series. Of all the genres that you believe NYC MECH encompasses, you chose a crime story. Why? When you were writing that issue, what was going through your heads? Put me in that room when you were working out that first story.
MILES: It started out a competitive thing with POWERS. We wanted to do a crime story faster and louder than Bendis and Oeming.
IVAN: Hahaha… Mike and Brian, I wasn’t even in the room when he said that. Also, I had my fingers in my ears. Honestly, I think the crime angle was something I came up with and for me it’s just the natural answer to questions that were coming up when I was talking about setting the first story in the Lower East Side, where I was living at the time. There’s a sort of second nature here for crime, an intrinsic progression from a regular action to a criminal reaction. It just made sense to the characters. As for POWERS though, in general when we were planning out the property we looked to Brian and Mike’s success as a goal, as an ideal. It’s really Image’s only color ongoing series that doesn’t sit comfortably in the industry’s category of choice, doesn’t confine itself with a two-minute origin montage and a heroic punchline. We wanted to tap into that potential, go outside the obvious and do our own things but still connect with the readers the way they do.
QUESTION: For Andy, drawing that first issue, did it feel different or did you do anything differently?
ANDY: Yeah. I guess I was kind of nervous, but in the nervous-exciting way. It’s the way I feel when I’m working on each page of the book still. It’s the nervous excitement like when you’re waiting in line for your favorite rollercoaster or whatever. It’s gonna throw you around, but you LOVE it. I fucking loved the first issue script, it sold me, the atmosphere and vibe were just dripping off the page, so I wanted and needed to demand things of myself artistically that would hopefully be unexplored territory. I’ve been trying to keep doing that with every issue so there’s always a little bit of nervous in the excitement of it. Is that too cheesy? Ah, fuck it. Who cares? That’s exactly the way it is.
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QUESTION: Follow-up question for Andy, do you even call it “drawing” or do you have a fancy name for it like “cartooning” or “penciling?” Do some artists really call themselves “pencilers?” I’ve never heard a painter call themselves a “watercolor-er.” Isn’t penciler just childish sounding? Do you ink your own work? Doesn’t that take a long time? Aren’t you worried about becoming one of those deadline-missing-type guys? Or are all the people who miss their deadlines all heroin addicts? Some of those late books seems like they hired folks who draw slow, but dude, some of that seems like they’re too busy shooting smack between their toes to draw my comics for me. What’s it like when you shoot up between your toes, Andy? Do you sing that "This Little Piggy Went to Market"
song?
ANDY: Yeah. I don’t know. Is that a good song to sing for that? Even though I’m not a huge Scorpions fan, I do a lot of things while “Rock You Like a Hurricane” plays in my head. Like drawing. I guess I just tell people that I ‘draw’ comics. If it’s somebody who is little more “high brow”, maybe I’ll throw ‘illustrate’ at them. It all depends on what’s playing in my head at the time.
QUESTION: So, wait, you guys had Andy draw the entire first issue before you pitched it. Is that normal?
MILES: I don’t know if it’s normal. We felt like the more art we had, the better our chances of getting picked up.
IVAN: we wanted a head of steam behind us, and we wanted to make it clear we were serious about what we were doing with all the flakiness that editors see these days.
QUESTION: Last July, San Diego, California, Convention Center, Comic Book Convention. You guys pitch the book to Jim Valentino and their Director of Marketing Eric Stephenson. You guys seemed focused on Image to begin with.
MILES: We created the book around the idea of Image and what they represent.
IVAN: Yeah -- we were pretty positive and focused on that goal.
QUESTION: Tell me about the pitch to Image. What, you go to a hotel room? There’s some pay-per-view movie about naughty nurses playing on the television. Eric Stephenson’s rooting around the minibar. Jim Valentino’s sprawled out on some vibrating honeymoon bed. Something like that? What’s the hotel room like? Is it a suite? Is there a balcony? Or is it just a regular room and you guys are sitting all cozy on a queen sized bed? Is the bed made? Are you worried about housekeeping interrupting the pitch? Paint me a picture. Paint it photo-realistically like Alex Ross would. Sweaty, sweaty Alex Ross!
IVAN: …
QUESTION: Okay, well, let’s try that question a different way: Did you guys have a speech worked out? Did you know who would say what? Had you practiced with each other? Was there a musical number involved? Did you have any visual aids besides that first issue, like charts or slides or Powerpoint? Was there any way you tailored the pitch for Valentino/Stephenson? Was NYC MECH originally about a spine-crushing Marketing Director?
MILES: Actually we put it off till the end of the show. There was no real plan. We just winged it.
QUESTION: What sort of questions did they ask you? Specifically, a guy like Eric Stephenson, their Director of Marketing. Were there lots of business type questions? Did you… did you need any spreadsheets? Did anyone use fancy business terms like “retail penetration?” Did anyone giggle at that phrase? I’d giggle. Were there questions you were expecting to get? Were there any questions that caught you by surprise? Did their questions ever get personal? Did the pitch session ever turn into a group therapy “let’s talk about what it was like to lose our virginity” full-blown rap session? Does Eric Stephenson own an acoustic guitar? I think that’d be awesome if he’d pull that out while some kids were pitching to him and start playing a little “STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN” on it, just to separate the pros from the boys, you know? If Eric Stephenson had started jamming out a little “Stairway,” how would you have reacted? When you lost your virginity, did you cry for your lost innocence because that’s, you know, I think that’s totally normal?
MILES: We put all our cards on the table and they liked it. They saw the big picture.
IVAN: I hate explaining this because I think it sets an unrealistic expectation for people pitching a book, but really Jim just made comments/questions about what sort of color we should use and what sort of logo… mostly stuff we were already working on already. We just immediately started talking about the correct path to take going forward.
QUESTION: Okay, they said yes at the pitch session. That’s also unusual?
IVAN: Yeah, again… it’s very rare, and people getting pitches together should worry about getting themselves a great pitch package together, because Image is NOT easy to win over. It takes work and more importantly it takes the right idea. Image has to fall in love. Sweet love.
MILES: I'm happy that Image said yes because we made the book for them.
And thus we conclude our first part of the interview. But join us next week, as…
NYC MECH CO-WRITER MILES GUNTER EXPLAINS HIS LOVE OF F-TROOP …
NYC MECH CO-WRITER IVAN BRANDON’S HORRIBLE SECRET: HE WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE HIT TELEVISION SHOW BOSOM BUDDIES…. BUT WAS HE THE PETER SCOLARI CHARACTER OR THE TOM HANKS CHARACTER?
AND NYC MECH ARTIST ANDY MACDONALD ... NYC MECH PENCILLER? NYC MECH DRAW-MAN? NYC MECH ART-LOTHARIO? WHAT’S THE CORRECT TERM??? I DON’T KNOW -- HE’LL ANSWER MY DUMB BULLSHIT QUESTIONS, BASICALLY.
OR WILL HE…? CLICK HERE TO READ VOLUME 2.
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