Adam Wilson started out self publishing his own mini-comics, and it wasn’t long before anthologies as Dead Future, Candy or Medicine, Slam Bang, If-X, Krazy Bov Comics, and others, featured his comics.
Adam went on to become one of the in-house writers at Twofold Comics, where he penned two of their titles, Manifest Destiny and Life (With Friends), as well as acted as Contributing Editor to their popular short story anthology series, Shrunken Wool.
Adam recently joined up with 215 Ink to release his first original graphic novel, Brian & Bobbi, which will hit shelves later this February.
Adam sat down with Michael Sacal, Senior Editor of ComicBookInterviews.com, to discuss his work.
Michael Sacal: How long have you been writing comics?
Adam Wilson: I’ve been writing comics for about five years now. I started out self publishing mini-comics with a few friends back in college and things kind of took off from there. Before long my stories started showing up in different anthologies, I was getting work with some different small press companies, and eventually I ended up here with Brian & Bobbi, my first graphic novel, coming out next month through 215 Ink.
MS: Have you written other creators’ characters, or only your own properties?
Life (With Friends) at IndyPlanet Manifest Destiny at IndyPlanet. Shrunken Wool at IndyPlanet
AW: For the most part, I’ve only done my own creator-owned projects, but there were a few company owned characters I’d worked on back when I was starting out. Nothing ever really came from any of them. They always seemed to fizzle out for some reason or another before being released. But it ended up being a great learning experience. It was kind of like riding a bike with training wheels. The characters and sometimes the basic plot were already in place coming into the project and I could focus my energies on figuring out how to best execute the story. I ended up learning a lot about the technical aspects of comic writing from those projects, things you take for granted when you’re starting out doing a creator owned project. And it was great because by the time I really started developing my own titles I already had a really great understanding of things like how a page flows, what kind of beats you need to hit, and how best to tailor a script to an artist.
MS: What is Brian & Bobbi about, and what is the inspiration behind it?
AW: Brian & Bobbi is a coming-of-age tale set upon a superhero backdrop. The book centers around the two title characters, Brian, a guy who grew up completely ignored by his large, loud, and somewhat self-involved family despite being born with amazing superpowers. And Bobbi, a girl who can’t convince anyone she’s just a typical teenager because her father is one of the greatest superheroes ever. The two meet by chance and we get to see the effect they have on each other’s lives.
Brian & Bobbi, from Adam Wilson and 215 Ink, is currently available from WOWIO.
The original idea came from just wanting to play with what you can do with superheroes from a storytelling perspective. There’s so much out there that explores the concept of superheroes, deconstructs superheroes, looks at the morality of superheroes, but whatever the story is it always focuses on the superhero. With Brian & Bobbi, I wanted to try and write something where the superhero elements weren’t the focus of the story, where it was all about the characters and the superhero stuff was just a plot device for telling the story.
MS: What can you tell us about GCD? What does, in fact, GCD stands for?
AW: GCD is a new ongoing series I’m developing for 215 Ink. It’s a music-based road trip adventure that takes place in world where music is the highest authority in the world. Musicians are sort of like their own sovereign people, more powerful than any government, religion or world power. In the beginning of the series the King of the musicians, a singer named Johnny Octane, passes away and a world-wide battle of the bands is announced to crown his successor. The series follows a young struggling singer who was just dumped by his band mates and decides to enter the battle of the bands as a solo act.
The series is still pretty early in its development, it probably won’t hit shelves till Summer or Fall, so I can’t say much more than that. But it’s been a ton of fun to write and we’ve got some incredibly talented artists working on it. I’m really excited about it and I think people are really going to like it.
Oh, and as for the title, it actually doesn’t stand for anything. G, C, and D are three of the most common chords used in songwriting. In some cases, they’re the only chords some artists use. I wanted the title for the series to be something short, simple, and have a bit of a punch to it. So GCD seemed perfect.
MS: How challenging has it been to write about a music bands considering that the comic book form is silent and relies on art and words?
AW: Well, it’s definitely been interesting, especially in the world of GCD where the music is so much more than the songs. A lot of who the characters are in the series is defined by the music they play. But I think if any medium could best capture music on a page it’d be comics. Like you said, with comics you have both words and art at your disposal, not just single images or lines but panels and pages, and there’s so much you can do with that.
Sure, you may not be able to convey a melody or a chord progression, but, at the same time, that’s not what you really want to focus on. All the musical elements of a song are there to help the listeners find some kind of an emotional core in the song, so the best thing you can do when trying to write a song into a comic is concentrate on that. If you can capture the energy, the emotion, and the effect a song can have on a listener, the readers will pick on that and, if done correctly, it can have a similar effect as listening to the song.
MS: How have you been able to tackle this challenge in order to provide the bands in GCD with lyrics that can convey emotion without music to accompany them?
AW: A lot of this doesn’t even come from the lyrics but from just establishing the characters themselves. With all the songs in the series, it’s the characters who are writing them, which means each bands’ songs are going to have their own distinct voices. So the easier it is for the reader to connect with the person singing the song, the easier it is for them to connect with the lyrics. Especially in a series like this filled with so many different bands. With each of them, regardless how small a part they play, you have to put a lot of attention into their inner workings and trying to give the reader as much of an understanding of who they are as you can. This way whatever the lyrics are that they sing they’ll have the desired effect on the reader.
MS: Are you a musician yourself, by any chance? Or know any who might help in maybe in this regard, maybe create a CD with music for the bands you could insert into the comic?
AW: I don’t know if I can really call myself much of a musician at this point. I used to play a couple of instruments and was in a couple different bands all throughout high school and college. But, at this point, it’s been a while since I picked up an instrument. Who knows how out of practice I am now. I did try to base a lot of the characters on real musicians though. When we first started working on the book, I’d send the artists a list of videos on YouTube from all these different bands. I wanted the art team to have a very specific idea of what kind of musicians these characters were, so I spent a lot of time going through my music library, trying to pick out the right musician for each character. I wanted to find people who not only matched their physical appearance but their musical style as well. It took some searching with some of the characters, but it ended up working out really well.
MS: Can you tell us about your signature character (s)?
AW: At this point, I’d have to say Brian & Bobbi are probably my two signature characters. They’re definitely the ones who have gotten the most recognition. Back when I was doing mini-comics and anthology work though, I did have a character named Smash Perfect that people always used to like. He was an intergalactic bounty hunter, superhero, and certified ladies man. Or at least that’s what his business cards said. Smash was one of those characters that was a lot of fun to write. He’s so oblivious and thinks so highly of himself that no matter what I came up with for him to do or say it always worked, no matter how ridiculous. And I’ll admit, I may not be done with Smash Perfect just yet. Every once and a while I’ll come up with a story idea for him that makes me laugh, so he may show up again somewhere down the line.
MS: What other mediums or genres have you worked in?
AW: Well I’ll sometimes work as a freelancer when I’ve got the time, so I’ve pretty much done any kind of writing they let me. Back in college, I used to do a lot of reviews for books, movies, music, whatever I could find. It was a lot of fun to do and a great way to get free stuff when you’re a poor college student. But besides that, I’ve done a lot of different stuff writing wise, from just short stories to some academic, research based, and writing. Comics are definitely my favorite though.
MS: What future projects are in the works?
AW: Well, GCD is the big one right now. I just finished up the script for volume 1 and am gonna start work on volume 2 pretty soon. I’m also trying to finish up book 2 of Brian & Bobbi. That one might be a little farther off though, just cause of the amount of work that goes into a graphic novel.
MS: If you could write any company’s character (s), which one (s) would it be and why?
AW: That’s a tough one just cause all the characters I’m a really big fan of come with a lot of baggage. I’d love to try my hand at a member of the Super family, but they’re all such legendary characters, Superman especially, that I don’t know if there’s any way I could do them justice. If I had to pick though, I’d probably choose Street Angel from Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. For those of you who haven’t read it, you should definitely pick it up; it’s an incredibly well-executed comic and such a fun series. You can tell just by reading it that the guys are enjoying themselves. So if I was going to work with someone else’s characters, those are the kind of characters I’d like it to be, one where I can just have fun with it.
MS: For anyone who wants to be a writer, what can you tell them about the craft?
AW: The best thing I could probably tell someone is just to write. For all the analysis of the process and the examination of the craft, more than anything the most important thing you can do is just write. If you do, and you write enough, eventually things will start to come together.
Everyone at ComicBookInterviews.com would like to thank Mr. Wilson for taking the time to answer our questions. For more from Adam and his work, check out Life In A Splash Page.
About the interviewer –
Michael Sacal is a freelance writer and archivist whose work has appeared in Faster Than Light, an anthology series published by Orang Utan Comics, and the Book of Geomancers, a Wikipedia-style online resource focused on the VALIANT Universe published by VALIANT Entertainment Inc.
Michael is a contributing writer for Surprising Comics and Red Leaf Comics who is in the process of developing multiple work-for-hire and creator-owned projects with different publishers in the United States.
Michael holds the post of Senior Reporter at Comic Book Interviews, and can be reached at msacal@comicbookinterviews.com.
