[heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Michael Trachiotis.

Michael, welcome to Comic Culture.

>> Hi, thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here, actually.

Thank you.

>> Now, Michael, you are the creator of a new comic series, which I believe is called Once Upon a Time in San Francisco.

And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this series.

To me, it is in keeping with sort of a Sergio Leone epic, but also touching into the world of, I guess, the Hong Kong cinema of the 1970s and 80s.

>> You're right on all levels.

Sergio Leone was one of my favorite filmmakers.

And I found that between Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America, there's sort of a gap in his historical depiction of our country.

So obviously being a lover of his films and working in the film business, I thought, well, I wanna find a project or some story that I can fit in between those two time periods.

And then hopefully, if it's ever made into a film, whomever the director and the producers are, take in some of the aesthetics of Sergio Leone in the film process because the film takes place in 1906 San Francisco.

And it's really specifically set in the Barbary Coast in Chinatown, which was a nefarious and notorious, lecherous borough or district in San Francisco.

And so I think it sort of keeps from a historical perspective of through Sergio Leone's eyes, how we see America through the underworld in some ways or in through the conflicts of human people, but those people who are in gangs.

And so that was definitely one aspect.

And so while I was looking around for a project, something that I could do that fit into that, being from San Francisco and living through a few earthquakes and studying the history of San Francisco as a kid, Ishi, the last remaining Native American in San Francisco, was one of my fascinating books.

So anyway, 1906 San Francisco just popped right up because of the disaster of the great earthquake and fire, the destruction of the city.

And the last film that was made that really depicts that is San Francisco with Clark Gable, which was 1936.

Obviously a lot of movies have been made in San Francisco and even sort of about San Francisco, but nothing about the earthquake.

So that attracted me because it hasn't been done recently.

And then once I started delving into the history of the city, I sort of found a Gangs of New York comparison with regards to the politics, to the graft of the city in 1906, rivaled that of New York.

And then, of course, I found the hatchet men, The Tongs, the secret societies who were basically running the Barbary Coast and Chinatown back alleys doing the human trafficking, the opium, the alcohol, the gambling, the prostitution was basically run by The Tongs.

And as I'm doing this research, I've come across a random article or two about some guy, some sort of vigilante guy who had a handkerchief over his face who was basically dissecting the hatchet men.

Unnamed, no motive, just a couple of, and really I had to dig deeply into archives of newspapers and magazines to even come across this.

I put the story together, put it into a 24 page comic book revision of the film, got that into Stanley's hands actually.

The man corresponded with me via email, as well as I had the opportunity to meet several great filmmakers, and I worked for Penny Marshall in screenwriting and story development.

What came of that was the realization that I had to have a main character in my film that the ensemble cast really was okay, it was interesting.

And then that's when I went back to that character I told you about, well, what would be a reason to build a story around this guy?

Because sure, John Wick, there's a story there behind what he does.

He's just going around killing people.

I wanted to have something with more depth, and that's when I got into the studying of the human trafficking and the sex trafficking.

And I thought, well, maybe this guy's a father, or maybe he's a brother.

And maybe his sister has been kidnapped, because that's what was going on in the streets of the Barbary Coast in Chinatown.

And he's on a hunt to find his sister, rescue her before she becomes a victim of human trafficking.

Well, I just gave you the log line of the movie, and of the story.

And so that's what I found digging through this, and I thought, what an interesting way to bring people into the debaucherous San Francisco Barbary Coast, and like Gangs of New York, or even Gladiator, or The Searchers by John Wayne, or Fist of Fury, and even John Wick.

This is a revenge film, but it's a search and rescue film.

It has all the elements of history, which are all the things that I love.

I wrote screenplays, probably 40 different screenplays, based on my conversations with Mr. Lee and other people.

I wanted to go back and recreate the graphic novel, or the comic books, to be more reflective of the new characters and everything else like that.

So that's what got me started on the graphic novel that I'm getting ready to publish, it's a 52-page graphic novel.

And it's basically, I've taken three scenes out of the movie, and created three separate chapters, if you will, that revolve around the main character, the Black Hatchet.

Comics and films are very similar in many ways, but they're also, just the way you tell the story, even though it's visual and it's writing in a comic book, there are differences.

And so the adaptation from the film to the comic book, the scenes are different.

Just as you might anticipate if you read a book that you like and then they make the movie, oftentimes the scenes are altered, or the characters are changed, or it's adapted.

So that's what I did with the graphic novels, I adapted it.

Because when you're writing for a screenplay and for a film, it's very similar.

I mean, that's why Alan Moore's writing for comics, when I taught screenwriting, was that's the only book I had the students read for screenwriting for film, because he's cinematic in his storytelling.

And he gets right down to it.

And so, but writing for a comic book, you have to be able to capture maybe a whole part of a scene, a whole scene, into a panel or two or three or four.

And the descriptive writing for a comic book is different than for a screenplay or a film.

So you're actually telling the artist, if you're a good writer, the camera angle over the shoulder, bird's eye view, you're describing the scene, the lighting, the whole thing.

Now you do that in a screenplay, but you don't do camera directions.

You don't do music, you don't do, oftentimes, at least when I write screenplays, I think the costume designer is gonna know that it's 1906, they'll be able to figure it out.

But in a comic book, you have to become the costume designer.

You have to become the prop manager.

You have to become the director of photography.

You have to be the gaffer, the best boy.

You have to create the whole scene.

And so, it causes you to rethink what you did here in the screenplay when you write for comics.

And then the amazing thing for me is, I had these great artists work on the book.

And I'm a very collaborative artist with them.

So what they produced was almost exactly what I was looking for.

But then I went back to the script and I'm like, you know what, based on how this scene is laid out, I'm changing the dialogue.

And I would go back and change the dialogue, but then I would take that change in the dialogue in the graphic novel and apply it to the screenplay.

Because so the transference of the shared process of writing for a comic book and writing for a screenplay, if you have done that or you're planning on doing that, it's very rewarding.

I mean, it's very, I don't know, cathartic.

I don't know if that's too big of a word to use for it.

But it's just sort of amazing when you see something visually.

It's like after, because I do the coloring.

So once I start seeing the color and the whole scene erupt, I'm like, whoa, wait a second now, this character over here.

Once the film is shot and the dialogue is done, you can't go, whoa, I mean, you can.

Whoa, wait a second, really what I wanted to say is this, this, and this.

No, it's all locked down before you turn the camera on.

Comic book has a lot of latitude.

You have a lot of leeway into where you wanna go.

And I think these people like Rick Parker or Bob McCloud, guys who work in the system, they had pretty rigid requirements when they were doing their product.

It was manufacturing process, actually, when you study comic manufacturing or comic creation.

But when you do your own, and so I'm sort of just self-discovering how much I love the process of creating the graphic novel, and I'm really disappointed that I only have nine more pages to color and then I'll be done.

I'm sort of disappointed.

It's been a long process.

>> You've got a lot to unpack there.

And one of the things I know from working on television and working with comics is that both are collaborative ventures.

But whereas I'm relying on tradespeople who understand how to light things that I might want them to do and can probably see something a little bit better than I can because they do it all the time.

In the same way, if I'm directing an actor, I'm going to trust the actor to bring something out of that script that I didn't see, although I might try and shade it and color it.

The same way I might ask a director of photography to get a particular shot, but they will find a way to make it more artistic because that is their specialty.

Working with comics, you can write that script where you tell the artist, it's panel one, is this happening?

They might see something or discover a way within that direction that you're giving them to make it better.

So it's fascinating to hear that you're leaning into that contribution and that collaboration.

So when you're working, and I know that the chapters are different artists working on the different chapters.

So how do you make sure that you're able to get the same sort of result from one collaborator to another collaborator to make sure that the audience isn't lost, but also to make sure that there's that continuity between so that the story is clear and we can all just enjoy rather than say there's a switch?

>> At first I thought that having the three different artists would actually detract from maybe the success of the book or the storytelling.

However, because I'm the writer, I can go back into the other stories and change or add things that you will find that start in the first story, but it also pops up in the third chapter.

Actually, the second chapter of the book is comprised of many of the panels that were created in the pre-vision book that got into the hands of Mr. Lee.

I couldn't tell that story the way it was written.

I took apart all those panels in that book, re-positioned them to create a whole new story with the same character.

I made sure that the artists knew that the color scheme of the character's costume is this color, like a light blue shirt, almost like your Superman behind you right there, right?

Almost that color.

I, being in charge of the color, as I do my color palette for the character, I just take that color palette and apply it to that character throughout all three books.

So you see him, and he has a distinctive bandana that he wears with a white crane logo on the front of it, which again makes him distinctive.

But to your point, and this is what I actually love about the challenge of doing comics is, how do you make every character unique and distinctive so that when you see them or interact with them, you know absolutely who they are, right?

And then based on dialogue and action, you know exactly where they end up and why they ended up there, so they become part of the storyline.

So the costuming becomes part of the storyline.

And in comics, color is the primary way of creating a association to a character, right?

Red and blue, Superman, red and blue, Superman.

So when I create a gang, right, like in the first chapter of the book, it's the Snake Tong gang.

However, because the Black Hatchet has already decapitated their whole gang, he has to now rely on mercenaries.

I have one guy from Nigeria, one guy from Morocco, one guy from Columbia, and one guy from the plains of Kansas.

Colombian outfit is different than a Moroccan outfit.

The colors are different, how they wear it.

So I collaborated with and using examples and even using some AI generated examples, right?

To show the artists, okay, the Colombian guy is gonna be dressed like this, the Moroccan guy is like this, the Nigerian guy is like this, the cowboy guy is like this, and the Snake Tong leader, here's what he's gonna be wearing.

And I give them all distinctive armbands since they're not part of the original gang, so they can be identified.

So as you go through the story, you know who is who, you figure it.

But the idea is keeping the continuity and the consistency between the look and the feel, the lighting, and the color scheme so that you know that who is who in each character, right?

So I think it's really, really important that if you're creating a story that you have it clear and easily identifiable who the characters are.

And in comics, you do that through color and costume.

So when the first story ends, now we go to the next story, which is the unmasking, we see him without his mask.

Okay, well, he's got a scar on his face.

This scar occurred because when his sister was kidnapped, they were ambushed.

And the pale dragon, who is the assassin for the Green Dragon Tong Society in Shanghai, who are running the ones in San Francisco, he goes to kill him and he slashes across his face.

So now he has a scar.

So that scar appears on his face in all three chapters so that you know who he is and the same color scheme.

So when you get to the third chapter, which is called Payback, which is another combat edition, you know who he is.

But in that story, I literally have three different gangs, okay, with three members in the alleyway.

And so to color the Gator Tong or the Alligator Tong or the Mud Dragon Tong, they had alligators, green and yellow, all right?

Shanghai Kelly, who's supposed to be dead in 1906, but is somehow resurrected, finds a way back to life.

His gang, he's wearing this lavender stuff, purple-ish lavender.

And then the nuns, who's a gang, it's based on a real nun who went around the Barbary Coast saving young girls, literally standing between the Tong, Hatchet Man and the girl.

She had a pretty, so that character is, she's based on that character.

They have a little nun outfit.

Three different schemes, three different colors, three different.

And I've actually had people say, wow, it's really cool.

I can easily, I see who's who, or stuff like that, because of identifiability.

But between the three stories, the one main character is the Hatchet Man, the Black Hatchet.

And so each artist created him differently, okay?

Like, well, in the third book, you just see him with his mask on the whole time, so you really don't see his face.

But in the first guy and the second guy, so that's why it's important that you have these identifiers that, just like in film, right?

You carry through from the first part to the last part of the story.

So that's how I was able to do it.

But what I really like is the fact that these three different artists had three different visions of basically the same character.

And I think that makes the work even more unique and more interesting, because you get to see and feel, just as you said, their vision, right?

Cuz I give them that leeway.

I say, here's your canvas, and let me see what you, here's some screen direction, and here's the dialogue.

Let me see what you come up with.

And wow, it's amazing when you allow people the space to collaborate.

I listened to Mr. Parker, and as he said, I can write and draw, and I feel like if I'm the artist, I'm gonna have more control over the finished product.

Which I totally, I can see that.

I could draw, it would take me about a year per panel.

So I have to rely on other artists, but I think that that's part of the collaboration process that I found in film.

When I work with actors, it's all collaborative, and that gives them the freedom to bring into the character, the voice of the character, I mean, bring their voice into the character.

It's not just from a script.

Same thing with the director of photography said before.

It's like, look, I wanna get that opening shot just like we got in Once Upon a Time in the West, where we see the desert, anyways.

I want that same feeling, and even though it's in the screenplay, they're gonna bring that to you.

You have to let these people collaborate.

That was one of the first things I learned in the business of filmmaking.

But even going all the way back to when I had my ad agency at 20 years old, you hire a graphic designer, you let them do their job.

And it's much, but you collaborate, it's collaboration.

Art is collaboration, man.

>> I did wanna talk a little bit about how you are approaching artistic partners.

Because you mentioned that you're dealing with an artist in Israel, and an artist in the United States, and maybe somebody in South America.

So how do you sort of collaborate with all of them, and just get them on board?

>> Well, the first book was, the artists were people I knew at Academy of Art University, so they are already right in the building.

The second book, I found many artists in the style that I was looking for, approached them, talked to them, what were their page rates?

Sent them sample script, I sent them concept art.

I'm really big into research and having all this stuff done ahead of time.

And I picked one, and it turned out to be a great collaboration.

And then Mahdi, the cover artist for the first chapter, we just had interacted through social media.

So, and I really, really like his work.

He's such a talented artist, and he did such a fantastic job.

And then he introduced me to Noah.

So I wanted to try and avoid going back out into social media and posting and saying, hey, I need an artist.

Can I look for an artist?

Because it's just a madhouse out there.

And so that's how those artists, and that's the collaboration process.

I would like to mention one other little thing.

If I have, how much time, 90 seconds?

>> Sure.

>> I'm also incorporating augmented reality into my books and my marketing materials.

So the cover of the graphic novel, when you open the augmented reality app and open and aim it at the cover, you'll get an animation of the actual cover.

Like the characters on the cover will animate in a slow motion sort of fight scene.

And I think that the application of the augmented reality and using animations of different panels and that sort of thing will be, is both a unique way to market and promote the book.

But I also think it creates a new interactive process with the readers so that they can find more ways to enjoy the story.

>> Well, Michael, they are telling us that we are just about out of time.

In the few moments we have left, if the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about you on the web, where can they find you?

>> The website is onceuponatimeinsf.com.

>> All right, well, Michael, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a very fun and fast half hour.

>> Thank you so very much as well.

I really enjoyed it.

>> And thank you everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

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