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Comics fans, it’s time to take your medicine: join creators Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner at the Witch Doctor: Mal Practice release party at the Portland TFAW 6/19 from 7 to 10 p.m.

RSVP on Facebook now!

Pick up the second volume of Witch Doctor, the popular horror series brought to you by Image Comics, and get it signed! Free food and beer (for those 21+ with valid ID) will be provided.

Witch Doctor made headlines in 2011 when the comic was hand-picked by Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) as the first original series published by his imprint, Skybound. Lauded for Seifert’s deft, entertaining writing and Ketner’s evocative, bold art, Witch Doctor was diagnosed a critical and financial success.

Find out why — see you at the Witch Doctor: Mal Practice release party 6/19!

RSVP TO OUR WITCH DOCTOR MAL PRACTICE RELEASE PARTY

ORDER WITCH DOCTOR: MAL PRACTICE

For the fifth year in a row, Things From Another World is proud to partner with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for their annual CBLDF Auction at San Diego Comic-Con! With the help of creators including Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead), Tim Seeley (Revival), and more (see below), we’ve been able to help raise more than $100,000 to help support the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

As in years past, we’re asking professional comic book artists* to create original sketches to donate to the CBLDF auction at San Diego Comic-Con. Artists can choose to sketch their own creator-owned characters, or, up to ten artists may sketch DC Comics’ proprietary characters, and up to seven artists can create sketches featuring Marvel’s Mighty heroes! NOTE: Artists wishing to sketch DC and Marvel characters will need to contact TFAW in advance so that they can limit the number of submissions. Also, these pieces are subject to publisher approval.

In exchange for their original sketches, participating artists will receive 300 free limited-edition autograph cards of their pieces.

New this year: instead of an original sketch, artists may choose to donate a page of original artwork. Unfortunately, sketch cards are not available for this option, but artists contributing pages will be prominently featured right here on the TFAW blog.

Join the following amazing artists who have already signed on for this year, including Charlie Adlard and Tim Seeley, Jeffrey Brown (Darth Vader and Son), Jonathan Case (Batman ’66), Francesco Francavilla (Black Beetle), Joëlle Jones (Helheim), Larry Marder (Beanworld), Jill Thompson (Beasts of Burden), Steve Lieber (Alabaster: Wolves), and Ron Chan (Husbands, Plants vs. Zombies). See all of this year’s artists here, and check out all of last year’s sketches here (including Charlie Adlard’s Walking Dead piece, pictured).

“Partnering with the CBLDF and the committed creators who generously donate their work is always the highlight of our year,” said TFAW Vice President and CBLDF Board Member Andrew McIntire. “As a retailer, we are both well aware of, and grateful for, the ongoing efforts exercised by the CBLDF in defending everyone’s First Amendment Rights, and we can’t thank our participating artists enough for their contributions to this important work. It is truly gratifying to observe the outpouring of support from the comics community in service of the Fund year after year, and we are honored to be able to be a part of this effort.”

“We continue to be humbled by the outpouring of generosity from the creative community and the abundance of hard work put in by the TFAW.com team to make the CBLDF auction a success,” said CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. “Thanks to the incredible efforts of the people involved, CBLDF is better equipped to do our work protecting the freedom to read comics. We’re grateful to all who participate.”

In addition to the autograph cards, TFAW and the CBLDF will highlight each artist and their sketch here on The Blog From Another World. To coordinate your inclusion in this event, please contact Andrew McIntire at andrewm@tfaw.com by June 17 with the subject line “CBLDF 2013 Auction,” or via phone at 503.905.2395. Print-quality .EPS or .TIFF files for the autograph cards must be received by June 21, and the original sketch can either be sent to the CBLDF’s NYC office by July 1, or delivered to their SDCC booth by July 19.

* Due to logistical constraints, preference will be given to those artists who have had work released via an independent or major publisher and have had their work distributed through the Diamond Previews Catalog.

DONATE ART TO THIS YEAR’S CBLDF SDCC AUCTION

BECOME A MEMBER OF THE CBLDF

SEE THIS YEAR’S PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Scott Snyder isn’t just one of DC Comics’ hottest writers, he’s currently one of their busiest! In addition to his extremely popular work on Batman, with artist Greg Capullo, and his new original series, The Wake, with Sean Murphy, he has two high-profile stories debuting this June: Superman Unchained, an ongoing series with Jim Lee, and Batman: Zero Year, a New 52 reboot of Batman’s origin with Capullo.

We had the chance to chat with Snyder about what fascinates him about Superman, his trepidations about creating a new origin for Batman with Zero Year, and the genesis of The Wake. Plus, we’ve got a three-page preview of Batman #21, the first issue of Batman: Zero Year. Read on!

TFAW: Why did Superman need another monthly comic? What itch will Superman Unchained scratch?

Scott Snyder: DC approached me about a year, year-and-a-half ago and said, “If you could write any other book outside of Batman, what would you write, or what character would you write?” And I said, “I have this idea for a Superman story, and it means a lot to me — it’s personal, and it’s everything I love about the character, and what I would love to explore and challenge about the character.”

And Dan [Didio] and Jim [Lee] and Geoff [Johns] said, “Well, we’re looking to start a new book for Superman’s 75th anniversary, would you like to tell it there as a #1?” And I said “Yeah sure, I’ll tell it whenever there’s an opening.” So for me, it wasn’t really about what’s missing, but it’s a really personal story that approaches the things that have fascinated me about this character since I was a kid.

TFAW: Can you expand on what fascinates you about Superman?

SS: What has always interested me about Superman are the stories that pushed him to his limits, when it comes to his moral compass. The thing that makes Superman super, at least to me, isn’t necessarily his skill set, or his powers. It’s the fact that he always does the right thing, and he’s been imbued with this incredible ethical compass from the Kents.

In that way I feel like he’s the best of us; he’s so deeply human. In a lot of my favorite stories, like “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way” — and even in stories where he sort of goes awry, where he’s doing the right thing, but he’s set in a context where it becomes the wrong thing, like Mark Millar’s Red Son, or Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come, or Dark Knight Returns — those stories fascinate me because at the end of the day, his greatest strength is also what leaves him vulnerable: he’s willing to stand up for what he believes and do the thing that is right, even when that thing is unpopular and could make him the enemy.

And sometimes he makes the wrong decisions. But that willingness to stick to what he believes is, to me, what makes him both the most heroic superhero, and the most human.

Our story really explores that; it puts him in a position where he’s up against a new villain, someone we’re making up, that challenges that aspect of him that says, “You have a certain set of ethics, and you have a certain amount of restraint, and things you are willing to do, and things you’re not, and sometimes that constellation of choices can put you in the crosshairs of the public.” And in that way, it’s about challenging Superman to his core, both physically, with a villain that could really beat the hell out of him, but also emotionally and psychologically.

TFAW: In that vein, Superman is kind of a time capsule of another era: the aspirational hero, as opposed to an antihero. How do you update him without changing that core, or do you update him?

SS: I don’t think you really need to update him in terms of his core; it’s more reminding people of the relevance of that core, given today’s circumstances. That’s what I really love about him: he’s timeless in the way that doing the right thing, or sticking by your ethics, never really goes out of date. Part of the challenge of writing him is, when you put Superman up against someone that’s just a physical threat, he wins — you can’t come up with much that would hurt him.

With Batman, you can put him up against human adversaries, and he can be in big trouble. But Superman, the real challenge, and the thing that’s wonderful about him and keeps him relevant, too, is that psychologically and emotionally, the character himself is very easy to put in jeopardy when it comes to the circumstances of public opinion.

The idea [of Superman Unchained], without giving away too much of our story, is to pit Superman against the people he thinks are his allies, and his home, and all of these things, because he’s making decisions and sticking by certain beliefs that really stand opposed to what people decide to do.

TFAW: Switching to Batman: Zero Year, you’ve stated in another interview that creating a new origin story for Batman caused anxiety and sleepless nights for you. Why is that?

SS: Well, it absolutely was, and now I’m sort of over it, finally, thank God, now that I’ve got the first issue in my hands. Because that material is sacred. Batman Year One is, to me, one of my two favorite books in the world, the other being The Dark Knight Returns. So doing anything that touches on that era in Batman’s life is really stressful.

What happened is that DC came to me and Greg [Capullo, Batman series artist], and told us that Year One couldn’t really be Batman’s origin anymore, because of the circumstances of the New 52. James Junior, the child in that story, would be about five years old in the present continuity, Selena Kyle has a different origin, and all of these elements have been changed.

My first impulse was to try and keep pieces of that and say, “Okay, well let’s just do a story where we see how much of that we can possibly save.” But it became really obvious that that was just timid and boring, and a paler version of Year One.

Someone sent me a letter to Frank Miller on Twitter that was yelling at him, and calling him blasphemous, for Year One, for changing the origin and doing it in a way that was darker than anyone wanted, and lots of stuff. And it really inspired me to say, I have a story that I want to tell, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and Greg knew about it, that would take place in Batman’s early years. So I said, “Why don’t we expand it, and make it the origin?”

It’s really, really different than Year One. Part of the goal was to do something that really stands on its own, and you never see anything that you saw in Year One, basically. So it’s meant to be bright, and fast, and bombastic, and kind of rock n’ roll, with all of the depth and layers we try and do on things like Court of Owls sort of hidden beneath the surface, because we really want you to see that it’s bright and kinetic, and very different than anything you’ve ever seen as an origin. And it has a really big city-shattering, city-shaking plot!

So I wanted to do something that was the best story we could do, and it came down to a decision where we knew, this is going to be controversial, and this will be really scary, and this could be a thing you fall on your face on, but you also know deep down — and Greg believes this, too — that’s it’s the best story you could do. And do you do that, or do you do the easier thing, and do a three-part Calendar Man story, or a four-part Poison Ivy story, and just sit back and play it safe?

I promised the people who read the book that we would never do that. There are too many people out there who would kill to do their dream Batman story. To sit here and play it safe and just write small, easy arcs — if you have a story in mind that you think could be better than that. I’d rather go out and fall on my face with a story that I believe in my heart is the best and craziest and most daring thing we could do, and doing that.

So that’s really what it boiled down to, and I couldn’t be prouder of this one. You’re going to open it, and you’ll see the first five pages, and if you don’t love those five pages and say, “Wow, it’s so clear to me that this isn’t Year One, this a totally wild take on [Batman's origin],” if the fun of it doesn’t win you over, you can drop everything else that I write. But I’m really hoping that the sheer force of the exuberance and fun and enthusiasm we have for this story catches you, and that you’ll see that we’re not trying to replace Year One, but do something special that recontextualizes Batman for today.

Year One was really important to me when I was growing up in New York City in the 1980s, because of the way the city looked [at that time], the threats that it faced — drugs, and prostitution, and corruption, all that stuff in Times Square, the way it was rotting. It was incredibly potent. But today, the threats that are most frightening to people who live in American cities aren’t the same.

In some ways we’re trying to tell a modernization of the Batman origin, and the mythos, that honors all the stuff that came before, but also contextualizes it for some of the threats you’re afraid of nowadays. The Red Hood Gang is supposed to be emblematic of the random violence and terrifying, senseless — or really directed, obsessive — violence that we’re afraid of nowadays. So, it’s really an attempt to pit Batman against the kind of threats that are really apparent to people nowadays.

TFAW: Will the Red Hood Gang be Batman’s main adversary?

SS: The story will be in three parts. But they’re his big adversary in the first part. So it’s probably the quietest section of the whole thing. There are going to be a lot of different enemies, a lot of different villains, big action, and all kinds of craziness. But the Red Hood Gang really features large in the first section of it.

TFAW: You and Greg Capullo have been partners on Batman for a couple of years now. How do you feel your relationship has evolved?

SS: Oh, it’s totally evolved. We didn’t get along at all when we first met, because we’re so different. He’s really outgoing and he’s huge — if you’ve ever seen him, he’s a giant man. And he’s very loud and he wears his heart on his sleeve, and I’m much more neurotic and reserved. And we were very protective of how we wanted to work: he wanted to work from an outline, and I wanted him to work from a script that was way too detailed for him. So we didn’t get along, and DC put us in contact and told us to talk about the story. And we did, and his first designs were so amazing that we began to hit it off.

Ironically enough, now he’s one of my closest friends, and not just in comics. We’re trying to pick conventions where we can go together with our wives. So we’re going to Dublin together, and Chicago together, really just so we can hang out. He’s become a real mentor and big brother to me. There’s nobody better in comics, artistically. I really feel honored, and lucky, and like I’m standing on the shoulders of this incredible giant who makes my pages better every issue.

TFAW: The first issue of The Wake was just released. What were some of your influences for that story, and how did it develop?

SS: It’s a story I’d been thinking about for a few years. Sean [Murphy, The Wake artist] and I talked about it over two years ago. I had an idea for a story that’s really about this creature, this discovery made at the bottom of the ocean. This creature calls into question all of our theories of evolution and folklore of the sea, and all of these cultural legends. And it’s both sci-fi and horror, and it’s really crazy, and it has this post-apocalyptic element, and it’s really out there.

And then we started working on “The Survival of the Fittest” for American Vampire, and we kept talking about it and saying, “When do you want to do that thing?” It was something we both held onto to do together.

It’s a book that allows us to flex our muscles, and explore our strengths, because it’s about stuff that we both really love. For me, history and evolution, and Americana, and at the same time horror, and this new kind of speculative science fiction that I’ve never really tried. And for him, he’s so great at world building, and he’s so evocative on the page. He does this great work and he loves drawing tech, so it’s a lot of fun, both in the claustrophobic underwater sequences, and the post-apocalyptic world building.

It’s a book I hope everyone likes, because we’re trying something really different for us. It’s got all kinds of new elements, and we’re trying to push the boundaries for ourselves, as creators.

TFAW: What makes you happy about working with DC?

SS: They’ve been really, really good about letting me write the stories I’ve pitched, as crazy as they’ve been. I mean, I came on Detective Comics and they let me use Jock and Francesco Francavilla, and make Jim Gordon’s son a psychopath. They let me do a story with the Court of Owls and let me possibly give Batman an evil brother. And in Joker [Death of the Family], they let me have the Joker running around with his face strapped on.

With Batman: Zero Year, they’re letting me do this nutty take on the origin that’s really, really out there. So yeah, at corporate comics, at the Big Two, there can be a lot of red tape, and the properties themselves have certain kinds of restrictions, and there are obligations that the company places on people. But I can only speak to my own experience at this point, and DC has been very, very generous to me, in terms of the latitude they’ve given me creatively. I appreciate that very much.

I think you can look at the stuff we’re doing on Batman, and that I’m doing on The Wake, and see that for better or worse, it’s what I’m pitching. So if you don’t like it, it’s my fault.

We want to thank Scott Snyder and DC Comics for an excellent interview! Make sure to pre-order your copies of Superman Unchained and Batman: Zero Year. Not only will you ensure you get every issue of the hottest storylines of the year, but you’ll save 20%. Plus, order the hot new series The Wake, and explore the rest of Scott Snyder’s comics and graphic novels here at TFAW.

PRE-ORDER SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #1 & VARIANT ISSUES

PRE-ORDER BATMAN: ZERO YEAR

ORDER THE WAKE

Are you looking forward to Superman Unchained? Are you curious about Batman: Zero Year? Post your comments below!

Get to know your local female comics community at Ladies Night, our special women-only event June 7! Come drink, draw, network, and learn how to transform an ordinary men’s t-shirt into something stylish at the Portland TFAW.

RSVP on Facebook now!

From 7-8 pm, take part in a Q&A with Joëlle Jones (Helheim), Rachel Edidin (Wired.com), Dylan Meconis (Out Foxed), and Leia Weathington (The Legend of Bold Riley)

From 8-10 pm, enjoy a Drink & Draw, plus a T-shirt demo by Dark Horse Comics’ Kari Yadro! Bring a men’s t-shirt (or purchase one here) and learn how to creatively remodel it.

We’ll be providing free food and beer/wine (for those 21+ with ID! Spread the word, and we look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP TO OUR LADIES NIGHT ON FACEBOOK

Are you coming to Ladies Night? Post your comments below!

Superstar Brazilian artists — and twin brothers — Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are signing at the Portland Things From Another World at 2916 NE Broadway Portland, OR 97232 May 22 from 7 to 10 p.m. Meet the multiple Eisner Award-winning talents behind B.P.R.D. Vampire, Casanova, Daytripper, The Umbrella Academy, and more!

Enjoy free food and beer (those 21+ with valid I.D.) and enter our raffle to win an original sketch by Fábio Moon (pictured here)!

Gabriel Bá rose to fame as artist for the Eisner Award-winning series The Umbrella Academy. Fábio Moon delighted fans worldwide with Sugarshock, an Eisner Award-winning one-shot written by Joss Whedon. The brothers have also lent their talents to Casanova, with writer Matt Fraction, B.P.R.D. 1947, with Mike Mignola and Josh Dysart, and B.P.R.D. Vampire, with Mike Mignola. Their creator-owned series, Daytripper, won the 2011 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet two of the most acclaimed artists in comics–and win a piece of original art. We’ll have a wide variety of books by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon available for purchase, so RSVP for this signing now!

RSVP TO OUR GABRIEL BÁ AND FÁBIO MOON SIGNING ON FACEBOOK

Are you coming to our signing? Post your comments below!

Artists David Chelsea (Welcome To The Zone), Paul Guinan (Boilerplate), Pete Soloway (Pizza Gun), Jacob Mercy (Pizza Gun), Sera Stanton (Sera Stanton Illustration), Tom Lechner (Nightlife), Rebecca Celsi (Kelso’s Choices), and Rachel Nabors (18 Revolutions) will take on the challenge of creating an entire comic book in 24 hours at the 24 Hour Comics Portland Edition May 18 at the Portland TFAW — and you’re invited to come watch! The entire event will be filmed for an upcoming documentary by Milan Erceg.

24 Hour Comics is an event where illustrators and artists have 24 hours to create a comic, including the story, finished art, lettering, color, paste-up, and proofreading. The Portland Edition is part of a two week-long event called The Wild, a series of events that takes on the world of artists, makers, writers, and cultural iconoclasts who juice up Portland’s awesomeness. The Wild takes place May 11-25 and is sponsored by the Portland Mercury, WebVisions, and more!

The Portland TFAW will stay open the entire 24 hours to host this exciting event — which takes place from 10 am May 18 to 10 am May 19 — but will close the register to sales after 7 pm. Make sure to stop by to see comics created right before your eyes all night long!

RSVP TO 24 HOUR COMICS PORTLAND EDITION ON FACEBOOK

Do you think you could create an entire comic book in 24 hours? Post your comments below!

We get hundreds of really great product reviews each month, and it’s our privilege to pore through them and pick three winners as part of our monthly Product Review Contest. Below, you’ll see who won from April’s Product Reviews. We’ll be sending $25 gift certificates to the people who posted them.

Joe from Saint James, NY is the first of this month’s winners. Here’s his review of the Zero Killer N&D TPB:

I picked this TPB up as a DOD, because the story sounded intriguing. I was not disappointed, the book has extra bonus documentation between chapters explaining more about the world the protagonist, Zero, lives in. An alternate reality to modern day NY, where atomic fallout and wars have taken their toll on the country and world in general. I put the book down once and read it in about 2 hours ’cause i found it that interesting. For a nick & dent deal of the day or for a low price i would say pick it up and add it to your collection. It’s worth a read.

Our second winner is David from Toronto, ON. David had this to say about the MIB 3 Agent G Bishoujo Statue:

Beautifully designed sculpt and design. Sexy and alluring. The best part: storage under the “sidewalk” for the extra pieces she comes with (Different right arm with weapon and her black sunglasses). Too many statues do not have this feature in the base.

Last but not least, there’s Lauren, from North Little Rock, AR, who’s review for Hawkeye My Life As Weapon Vol. 1 TPB really spoke to us.

This book is very entertaining. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Clint Barton/Hawkeye. The man cannot seem to stay out of trouble!

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote reviews last month. You’re helping people decide what to get (or what to avoid) next.

So submit your reviews and help your fellow collectors, and us, sort out the “HOT” from the “NOT”! Who knows, you may be one of next month’s winners.

HOW TO SUBMIT A PRODUCT REVIEW:
It’s simple! Just visit any product page and look for this:

Click on it and our product review form will appear in a popup. Just fill out the pertinent information and submit your review, and you’re done! We’ll take a look at your review and get it up on the product page soon thereafter!

There’s also a really easy way for you to call up everything you’ve ever ordered from us and review it. Simply log in to your account and go into the Order History Section. Next to each item, you’ll see a “Review it!” link.

Questions? Comments? Let us know below!

A disillusioned hitman. A powerful Mafia family. A shadowy organization known only as Silence & Co. All three collide in a thrilling, action-packed tale of violence and revenge in Silence & Co., an original graphic novel coming May 29 by Gur Benshemesh, with art by Ron Randall (Trekker) and a fantastic cover by Steve Lieber (Alabaster, Whiteout). Pre-order Silence & Co. now and save 20%!

Need more? We’ve got an extended trailer for Silence & Co., below, as well as a pulse-pounding, 84-page preview (WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE)!

Hitman Alexander Maranzano feels trapped by the criminal life and family obligations he has always known. Pressed into service by the shadowy Silence & Co. to fulfill a contract, what starts out as just another job quickly turns into a deadly race for answers.

From the dusty streets of Marrakesh to the lush jungles of Colombia and back to New York City, Alex’s search for revenge and the truth triggers a series of events that alter everything he has ever known.

Greg Hatcher of Comics Should Be Good! on CBR says, “. . . Mr. Benshemesh knows how to spin a tale; the writing is as crisp and spare as a story like this calls for, and he keeps things moving along at a good clip with plenty of twists and turns along the way.”

Action-movie junkies and lovers of classic films like The Godfather and Scarface will love Silence & Co. — and the journey Alex Maranzano takes to find the truth, no matter what the consequences, or the body count.

PRE-ORDER SILENCE & CO. AND SAVE 20%

Are you looking forward to Silence & Co.? What are some of your favorite crime comics? Post your comments below!

The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, debuted in 2009 and follows Tom Taylor, who was his father Wilson Taylor’s inspiration for a series of hugely successful Tommy Taylor children’s fantasy novels — much like the Harry Potter series. When we first meet Tom, his cold, distant father has long since disappeared, leaving Tom jaded and disillusioned, scraping together an existence signing his father’s books on the convention circuit.

When a woman named Lizzie Hexam shows up and questions whether he’s the real son of Wilson Taylor, Tom’s world explodes, with half his “fans” believing he’s a fraud, and the other half believing he’s the living incarnation of the Tommy Taylor character come to save the world. Framed for multiple murders and on the run, joined by Lizzie and journalist Richie Savoy, Tom is suddenly thrust into a world where stories literally come to life, and he’s pursued by a mysterious cabal who wants to control what people read — and believe — at any cost.

Unwritten explores the sheer power of stories — and of readers’ beliefs — making it an intense, engrossing read. To make things even more interesting, Unwritten is traveling to the world of Fables, another Vertigo superstar, starting with Unwritten #50 this June. Plus, September marks the arrival of the original hardcover graphic novel, Unwritten: Tommy Taylor & The Ship That Sank Twice, the graphic novel “adaptation” of the first Tommy Taylor book!

We chatted with Fables writer Bill Willingham last month, and now we’ve had the opportunity to interview Unwritten co-creators Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Read below for a fascinating look into the past, future, and present of Unwritten, as well as a four-page peek into Unwritten #48, available now!

TFAW: Unwritten is such a multi-layered, surprising series. How did it come together, and how much did you have planned out when it debuted?

Mike Carey: Thank you! Well the gestation process was really a very strange one. After we wound up on Lucifer, Peter and I really wanted to do another book together, and we pitched a whole lot of ideas to Shelly Bond, our editor, but for one reason or another none of them made it through the triage process. And then after a while we stopped pitching because other stuff intervened. Peter went off and did American Jesus, I did Crossing Midnight and my Marvel stuff.

And then we met up again at San Diego Comic-Con in (I think) 2009, and Vertigo editor Pornsak Pichetshote was there too. We got a dialogue going, and we carried it on after we all went home from the Con. But basically Peter had one idea and I had another, and we weren’t sure which one we wanted to develop. “Put them together,” Pornsak suggested, “and see what happens.” We did, and what happened was The Unwritten.

Peter Gross: My idea was about a kid whose father wrote a famous book using the kid as the main character, and then disappeared afterwards, leaving the kid with the awful fallout of being famous and abandoned. Mike’s idea was about a guy who is given a magic horn that if you blow it, the world changes. When we started merging them together, we basically had the opening scene of The Unwritten!

And from there we planned out what we wanted the book to be about, and came up with the ending and the main stepping stones along the way. As we’ve developed and executed it more, those beats have altered and some characters have been added, made more important, or even determined their own paths, but the ending has remained (in our heads) essentially the same as what we planned at the start.

TFAW: What was it that most interested you about the character of Tom Taylor?

MC: I guess for me it’s that I like heroes who start off completely clueless and out of their depth and have to grow into the role. Nothing turns me off quicker than a James Bond-like protagonist who’s always got exactly the skill set he needs to survive. Tom, when we first meet him, seems to have no skill set at all — but he does have the “literary GPS” that his dad drummed into him, and that turns out to be relevant. Apart from that he’s a babe in the woods. But gradually he pulls it together and manages to survive, against all the odds.

PG: I think for me it was the challenge of dealing with the reluctant hero. That’s actually the sort of character I oftentimes find frustrating and unsatisfying. And I think at times, to be honest, Tom can be frustrating, especially because he’s a character caught up in a lot of big story ideas — within the pages of the series, and within our intent. So Tom’s challenge is to find his humanity in all that.

TFAW: What do you think is the biggest change Tom Taylor has undergone during this series — besides learning to believe in magic doorknobs and such?

MC: He becomes someone who’s capable of compassion. The Tom of the early issues is really all about himself — very selfish, quite self-pitying, more than a little obnoxious. Then when Cosi and Leon Chadron die right in front of him in issue #8, he starts to realize what responsibility is. Which is why, when Lizzie starts to fall apart, he responds in the way he does. He’s prepared to risk himself to help her, not because of the whole romantic/sexual thing between them, which hasn’t happened yet, but because he feels responsible for what his father has done to her on his account.

PG: Not only is Tom a reluctant hero, but he’s also a very reserved one. He was terribly hurt as a kid, and there wasn’t anyone in his life to open up to about it. So he’s very reserved and doesn’t reveal himself. But I think more and more, we find out the reasons for that, and he’s able to open up more. But it’s a long slow process for him. And I think it’s all very tied up in the role his father has tried to design for him. But on one level, Tom’s story will always be about becoming more human.

TFAW: One of the main themes of Unwritten is the power of words, and of readers’ beliefs. They can influence reality, and literally change one into a different person! How do you see this relating to “real life”?

MC: Peter and I talk about this side of the story all the time, and I think we both see it as the single most important thing we’re saying. And weirdly, it’s Pullman who gets to voice it most clearly, in the very next issue. We don’t actually live in the real world, although we generally think we do. We live in ideas and situations that we build for ourselves — stories about the world, overlapping, sometimes contradicting, but empowering in the sense that the stories allow us to function. They provide meaning, and without meaning we’re just deterministic ping pong balls. We react, blindly, to external circumstances.

So yes, I think it’s true that we live in a narrative of our lives. And therefore the construction of that narrative becomes very, very important. People will constantly offer you stories that you can choose to buy into. Big government is killing you. Immigrants are swamping our country and destroying our values. Jews are evil, or Muslims or Communists or gays are evil. You have nothing to lose but your chains. Jesus will save your soul. These propositions furnish your world. You effectively choose to live in the world where they’re true. And obviously there’s a much wider set of propositions that’s just about you. The story of your life becomes your life.

PG: I think, more and more, as we worked on this book we’ve learned of other examples of how our lives are based on narrative — both biologically, and culturally. But the underlying principle of that is that narrative is always a lie we tell ourselves. At their core, all stories are lies, and all storytellers are liars. Not sure where to go with that, but I guess we’ll find out by the end of The Unwritten!

TFAW: Peter, there’s a big focus on the power of words, but you also have the challenge of presenting this visually to the reader–what are the easiest and most difficult parts of illustrating Unwritten?

PG: The most challenging is trying to find ways to illustrate “books” in comics and still have it feel like a book. The opening scene of the series is an example of that. Mike wrote the whole Tommy Taylor [interlude] as prose, and we were going to have it just as text, but I was worried it might turn off some readers. So I did it as a mixture of text and visuals that became our way of doing a book. A similar thing happens with finding ways to show web pages, TV, and other more modern ways that information gets delivered in the digital age.

The easiest part is . . . actually, none of it is easy — but the funnest part is when we divert to other story styles and I get to bring in wildly different artists to do “finishes” over my layouts to give the chapters a distinct and separate look.

TFAW: In the current story arc, we finally get some answers about Pauly Bruckner. Is this going to be the finale of this character?

PG: No! Pauly is a character who was not planned from the start, and he’s the character who has most demanded more scenes and a greater role in the story. He’s our wildcard factor, and we never quite know where he’s going with things.

MC: Absolutely! Pauly is along for the duration, and still has a very important part to play. Every book needs a sweary rabbit!

TFAW: Pauly has become such a compelling character — absolutely repugnant, totally self centered. He literally thinks everything is about him. Does he represent something to you guys? Is he a stand-in for something?

MC: If Tom is the clueless hero, Pauly is the villain hero — our Richard the Third. Like you say, he’s a monster, but he works really well as a viewpoint character. We did the monster as Everyman in Lucifer — and there’s a sense in which Pauly is like Gaudium in Lucifer, except that at rock bottom he’s a tragic figure. He tortures himself by assuming that every place he finds himself is unbearable. Willowbank Wood, when you think about it, would have been heaven for some people, but for Pauly it’s Hell. And now we meet Pauly in Hell and we think, you know, maybe this is how it’s always going to be for you. You make your own weather.

PG: Pauly is Mike, if Mike was American and not a polite British fellow!

MC: I’m gonna take that as a joke.

PG: Well there was a smiley face and all . . .

TFAW: Richie has had such a character arc — a journalist who glommed onto Tom, then became a vampire, then rejected Tom to go live his own story. What’s next for him?

MC: The next time we see Richie, those two aspects of his character — journalist and vampire — are both going to be crucial. He’s in a very extreme situation, trying to avert a catastrophe or at least slow it down. But he’s got to go against type in some ways, and do some things that don’t sit right with him. Because he does have a conscience, even though he tries to hide it. I tend to see Richie as an idealist who’s pretending to be a cynic.

TFAW: Lizzie is another character who has undergone a huge shift — from a troubled orphan girl to a brainwashed Dickens character, programmed to help and love Tom — and that’s before she died! Can she and Tom ever have a relationship as equals?

PG: Both Lizzie and Richie exist partially because they have to. Tom’s father has created pathways of story that Tom’s life slips into to build on the power of the Tommy Taylor stories. Tommy Taylor, boy wizard, had his companions Peter and Sue, so Tom Taylor attracts his own companions, Richie and Lizzie, to fulfill those roles. So the challenge for them, just like it is for Tom, is to hold on to their humanity and not get swept up into the greater currents that Wilson Taylor has set into motion.

TFAW: What can you tell us about Unwritten Fables, the next arc?

MC: It’s a stage in Tom’s odyssey in which he finally comes face to face with some unwelcome truths about the fictional characters he’s been meeting, and maybe to some extent about his own nature — and the backdrop in which he makes these discoveries is the Fables Homelands. Sort of. But with a very scary twist. Because the Fables side of this equation is a crisis that we had every reason to think was over and done with, and it comes live again in a really alarming way. I think there are big narrative payoffs for readers of both series.

TFAW: An Unwritten-Fables event seems like a perfect fit — both center on the power of stories and belief. How did the idea germinate?

PG: Bill Willingham was a big supporter of The Unwritten from the start, and kept saying he wanted to do a crossover or something shared. But as close as the two books are in concept, they each take a different approach to the subject of stories and characters from stories. Ours is that the stories happen, and then characters might appear because of the stories. Bill’s is that the characters were real, and the stories came from their actions.

Those are two pretty opposed ideas, and it wasn’t until we got to a point in our story that those ideas sort of demanded attention, that doing a shared arc with Fables finally became a possibility. The nice thing is that this isn’t just a throwaway event designed to boost sales — it’s an essential story tipping point for us. If we couldn’t do this story with the Fables characters, we’d still have to do the story somehow.

MC: Although it wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun. Using the Fables cast has been pretty much pure pleasure.

TFAW: What is your favorite thing about Fables?

MC: I love the feeling you get from Fables that nobody is safe and anything can happen. It’s like the fairy tales and folk tales that are part of its source material — it portrays a world where the worst outcome can always come to pass, and where life and happiness are precarious. That’s part of what makes it such an exciting read.

And of course I love the vivid, evolving characters — my all-time favorites being the Thirteenth Floor witches.

PG: I like the powerful simplicity of what Bill brought together. I think it was Fables that led the way with all the fairy tale-based movies and TV shows out there now. And I love that after 125 or so issues, it’s still compelling and readable. It’s one of the few comics that continue to catch my jaded interest and that I make sure to keep up on.

TFAW: Bill Willingham mentioned that he begged to write parts of the story, because, I quote, “I’ll never get a chance to handle certain characters in this way again. One hopes.” Care to shed a little light on that?

MC: We go to some very dark places with this story, and we see some harrowing things. More than that, I think, we get to see good people making bad choices because all the good choices are gone. If we do it right, parts of it will hurt.

PG: Bill and Bucky had a lot of input into the story, and there were some things they talked about that they had wanted to do with Fables until the stories went off in another direction. Because of the nature of fiction in The Unwritten, we are able to go in some of those other directions.

TFAW: What else are you reading right now?

MC: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. Very, very clever stuff. Too clever for its own good, sometimes, but man it’s a great read.

PG: I haven’t been able to read anything in a while because I draw most every minute of the day. But I’ve been slowly listening to audiobooks of Game of Thrones!

TFAW: What else do you have coming up that you’re excited about?

MC: I’ve got a novel coming out in January of 2014 that I’m very proud of. It’s sort of a retelling of the myth of Pandora in a post-apocalyptic future. And my superhero series, Suicide Risk, is debuting over at BOOM! Studios.

Oh, and I just got the green light to go to script on a movie version of one of my own novels, which is really exciting.

PG: I’m excited about our graphic novel adaptation of Wilson Taylor’s famous first novel, Tommy Taylor and the Ship that Sank Twice, coming out in the fall of 2013!

MC: Yeah, and that . . .

Our sincere thanks to Mike Carey, Peter Gross, and Vertigo Comics for an excellent interview. Pre-order Unwritten #50 and Unwritten: Tommy Taylor & The Ship That Sank Twice and save 20%!

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Are you a fan of Unwritten or Fables? Post your comments below!

Suicide Risk, the hot new title by Mike Carey (Unwritten) and Elena Casagrande (Hack/Slash), debuts this Wednesday, and we’ve partnered with Boom! Studios to throw a contest to celebrate the new title!

About the Book:
Heroes are dying, and cops are dying twofold. Humanity is underpowered in the face of their onslaught, and people are suffering untold casualties trying to stem the flow.

After barely surviving a super-powered bank heist gone horribly wrong, beat cop Leo Winters vowed to try and find a way to stop them.

Following a lead, he discovered two lowlifes who seemed to be able to grant a person powers . . . for the right price. Thing is: you don’t get to choose which power. It’s seemingly random, a crap-shoot, a risk.

Will Leo decide to take that risk? And why is it that even the heroes in this world eventually break . . . bad?

Enter to Win:
Publisher BOOM! Studios is sending us eight copies of Suicide Risk #1 signed by writer Mike Carey, and you have three ways to enter to win! We’ll be giving away four signed copies to customers who order Suicide Risk #1 and/or #2 by June 5! Plus, stay tuned: we’ll also be holding contests on Facebook and Twitter this week. General Contest Rules apply.

In the meantime, check out our four-page preview of Suicide Risk #1, below!

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