[triumphant 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 guests today are writers Thomas Sniegoski and Jeannine Acheson, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Hi.

- Thanks for having us.

- So you are the co-writers of the new book from the "Vampiverse" called "The Vamp" So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that book.

- "The Vamp" spins out of the original "Vampiverse" series that Jeannine and I wrote for Dynamite this year.

She's one of the many versions of Vampirella that exist in the various like multiverses throughout the Vampirella universe.

And she was the one that we enjoyed the most, she was the one that had the most potential.

She was like a 1930s pulp adventure type version of Vampirella, with supernatural abilities and stuff.

Very much like "The Shadow", "Spider", or "Doc Savage", things like that.

- And it's interesting because up until I guess, into the "Spider-Verse", the idea of a multiverse was something that was, I guess, really hard to explain if you weren't in that group of comic fans.

But now it's something that we could talk about, and we can explore, and there's the new "Spider-Man" movie came out, and then we've got the "Doctor Strange".

So, what is it about the freedom of a multiverse that you two enjoy as writers?

[indistinct chatter] [laughing] - I'll take that one too.

- But you know what, it's interesting that you mentioned people who aren't necessarily familiar with like, the "Spider-Verse", because I'm fairly new, very new to comics.

And for some reason, our book "Vampiverse", it just kind of clicked for me right away.

And I'm not a comic, wasn't a huge comic person, but it just kind of made sense to me, so.

- What does that say about you?

= I don't know.

[laughs] - I think the best way to talk about these various universes and stuff, is that it allows you to take something familiar and put a spin on it that's unfamiliar.

So it like, it takes something that you're used to doing.

Like I've wrote "Vampirella" in the '90s, I wrote Vampirella, "Vengeance of Vampirella" recently for the last couple of years.

So it allows me to look at that character from a completely different perspective and do something different with her that I'm allowed to do, because it's Vampirella in another, from another universe or another reality or whatever.

- It's interesting too, because as comic fans we are used to this idea of continuity.

I mean, DC was wet to it so much that they sort of rebooted everything in the '80s with their "Crisis" series.

But now we see that that fans are really into these alternative versions, and even DC is embracing this with their "Bombshell" line, or the "Justice League Dark" or something like that.

So as you get to reimagine this character of Vampirella into something in a completely different decade, you know, I'm thinking about the sort of story that you might write if it's Vampirella in contemporary times with the contemporary continuity, but as you create your whole new world, what sort of pieces are you putting in there?

And where are you getting those inspirations from?

- I think a lot of our inspiration came just from pulp, that you've written a lot of.

- Yeah, a lot of it.

For "The Vamp" it was like strictly the pulp stuff.

Like, I mean "The Shadow", I said like the "Spider", even "Indiana Jones".

I mean, you tap into that kind of what there's like a certain level of expectation that people have with pulp fiction.

You know, mad scientists, Yetis in the Himalayas... [Jeannine laughing] An orangutan butler.

I mean, just these crazy concepts that I was just picking and choosing.

She's not all that familiar with pulp, so she was very inquisitive about like, what does that mean exactly?

So I'm handing her that, you read this, read this, read this.

So yeah, I mean that's where "The Vamp" comes from.

Like the other characters that we've created for the "Vampiverse" series, there were tons of different Vampirella who were just dipping into different genres.

Oh, what would've a Western Vampirella be like?

What would a Samurai Vampirella be like?

what would like, you know what I mean?

So, it was just kind of like tapping into the existing genres, and comics, and books, and movies, and stuff like that.

- Pulps have a certain I guess, visual style, or certainly I guess, time of day when these stories kind of take place.

So is this something that you're working with an artistic partner?

Is this someone that you are, rather you're giving them the information that you think would be key to help set a scene, or are you're sort of trusting them to interpret your words and come up with the best visuals?

- Actually, a little bit of both.

- Yeah, I think both.

The artists that we're working with, Daniel Maine, through "Vampiverse", from beginning to end.

And I feel like we've come to a part in our, a place in our relationship where we can say to him, "We kind of picture it this way, it's like 1930s, it's Art Deco."

And then he just kind of runs with it and comes up with the most amazing images.

- Yeah, yeah, he did a lot of like, when we introduced "The Vamp" character in the "Vampiverse" mini-series, he kind of took the bull by the horns and did a lot of design and stuff that we didn't even tell him to do.

Like in the story, she has this dirigible that she gets around in, he gave it a name, he gave it a specific design, he gave it certain symbols, and it was really, really neat to kind of go, "Oh, we didn't come up with any, we didn't do any of that, he did that all himself."

- So when you work with a partner who you can trust as much to come up with these great visuals, is this something where the two of you are working on the script and you provide him with the full breakdown, the way that the DC style might be?

Or is this something where you give them the Marvel style and then you kind of go back in and try and make your dialogue ideas fit into the pages that they come in?

- I've always worked full script that's like, since I started in comics, that was the thing that I kind of understood that best.

That was the way that I like to work.

So that's the way I've taught her how to do scripting and stuff.

Yeah, so he's getting a full script of a basic description of what's going on in the scene, where the characters are, what do we see in the particular shot?

Though we do leave a lot of freedom, we leave a lot of stuff open for interpretation.

We need to be specific in terms of like, what's coming up down the line in the story?

- Now Jeannine, as someone who doesn't have this background in comics, I'm imagining that you have to sort of learn quickly the format, the style, the language that you need to put this together with your artistic partner.

So what kind of learning curve did you have, and how did you sort of work around those I guess, lessons?

- Huge!

[laughing] Tom's been great teacher.

The first comic that we wrote together was just a one shot for Valentine's day in 2021.

- It was a Vampirella novel.

- And it was a Vampirella.

And he kind of off-the-cuff asked me if I wanted to write this with him, we had just finished writing our first novel, and I was like, "Aren't we?"

We we're writing our first novel.

And I was like, "Sure, why not?"

And I was completely lost, I was completely lost.

And it was, he had given me books on writing comics, and he had given me some scripts that he had written and then showed me layouts, and showed me lettering proofs, and then showed me the final comics.

So I had kind of the continuity of how it was supposed to go but I was still completely lost.

And we've been writing comics, we've got a "Pantha" series out, and we have "Vampiverse", and now "The Vamp", and I have finally gotten to a place where just this last issue, I wrote three pages, I laid them out like completely by myself.

So I feel like I'm kind of getting there, but it's a lot to learn, it's storytelling, and it's... - Visual.

- In your head, and there really is an awful, awful lot to learn, and I have only just cracked the surface.

- It's got to be sort of an interesting way to learn.

I mean, because it's not like you're a student in a class, you're someone who's got the publisher saying, "I need those pages."

So there's got to be a little bit extra pressure to not only do the job, but to do it at a level that they are expecting.

So beyond the you know, maybe the first couple of days where you're wondering how to do it, where do you kind of feel that you hit your rhythm?

I mean, you mentioned the last few pages that you just put together yourself, but when did you start to feel like you don't necessarily need the training wheels?

- Probably, I hope someday in the future.

[laughing] I don't know, I don't think he's ever going to say to me, "All right, you go script that half of the issue, and then I'll pick up where you left off."

I don't think that's ever gonna happen, I hope it doesn't happen.

[Thomas laughing] I don't know, I don't know.

I think I'm always gonna at least need him kind of like, walking beside me, maybe without training wheels, but I'll see.

- She's getting there, she's a lot harder on herself than she needs to be.

- Thomas, you've taken on a writing partner which as someone who is a successful author, that's got to be a bit of a challenge as well, because you're used to calling all your shots, and now you've sort of got someone who's got ideas of their own.

So how do you kind of make this partnership work so that you are both contributing, and at the same time you feel like you're saying what you need to say?

- For one thing, I don't think I would've ever asked her to be involved, if I didn't think she was gonna contribute something to it in some way.

So that, I had no problem taking her on with her own opinions, I mean.

And I think she brings a very interesting perspective, especially to Vampirella, a female character.

I think that's an added plus for Vampirella and for "The Vamp" actually.

So yeah, actually it's more fun because I actually have somebody to kind of bounce things off of, and to like, "Hey, what if we did this crazy idea?"

And to get an actual response, as opposed to me sitting here inside my own head for eight hours a day, which is you know, for many, many, many years, that was exactly what I did.

So yeah, I think it's really kind of neat having that other side, that other person, that other perspective, those other kind of like, my idea filters through her thoughts, and her thoughts kind of take my idea and maybe spin it off in a different direction, and stuff like that.

So it's fun, actually it's way more fun than working alone [laughs] completely.

- Now, you mentioned that you spend eight hours a day in your office working every day, writing.

So as the two of you are writing together, is this something where you're in the same office, or is it something where you work on your pages and then give them to Jeannine?

Or is it something where it's just, you both get a draft and review it?

- We do a combination of like, she'll come in, she'll come to my house, like maybe two days a week where we're like literally side by side writing.

And the other times that we're together, we will work over like, over Skype, with Google Docs.

So we'll have the document open, and we can see each other, and we throw things around that way.

So there's some form of contact almost all the time when the scripts are being put together.

Other than that time that she, the last time she didn't.

I don't even know what I was doing.

- We had a deadline.

- I had a crazy deadline, and she was like, "Well, let me take a shot at this champ."

- Well, it's got to be satisfying too that your partner wants to step up and work on this, even without you, 'cause you both seem to know exactly where this ship has to go in order to deliver the goods.

So when the two of you write the script together, you give it to your artistic partner who puts it all together on the page, and it becomes something different than the two of you had thought up, it becomes this whole other story.

Are you occasionally having to find yourself revising the direction of the dialogue, or maybe excluding something because the art just really made it pop?

- We've done some like minor revisions to dialogue and stuff like that.

- And I think we only had, we had one instance in "Vampiverse" where we literally just had to ask the artist to go back in and change one thing.

- Yeah, because he left out a detail that was important to something coming later on.

- Yeah.

- That needed to be, that was like an important moment in the comic.

So, without that particular piece of visual cue that wouldn't, the ending wouldn't have worked anymore.

So yeah, I think that's the only time we've ever had to ask him to actually go back and either, he didn't even redraw it.

Didn't he just add a character, or reposition?

That's the beauty of stuff with digital artwork now, is that you can actually go in and just kind of rejigger a panel, rejigger I think it's in a panel.

- To not having to do the whole thing over.

- Yeah, having to do the whole thing over.

I remember the old days when I first started in comics where that would've required somebody to do like pay step, like physical pace step, like pace something over something and redraw on top of it and stuff, so yeah.

But yeah, that's it.

He's really good I mean, he nails it.

Daniel nails it 99.9% of the time.

- So, when the two of you are working together, you mentioned that there was one detail that would become important as the story resolves itself.

How are you sort of coming up with this?

Is this something where the two of you just kind of, "Okay, here's an idea where this happens, and then that."

And then you kind of sew it together into a clear narrative, or is it something where you have an idea of where you want something to end?

And now it's like, Margaret Mitchell, she's going to figure out how Rhett and Scarlet get together and break up?

- I think we started with kinda a general story arc and where things are gonna go from the very beginning of theories to the end.

- Just kind of like, it's almost like spitballing.

You just kind of throw things out there and you hope that this connects to this, which connects to this, and stuff like that.

The other day we were making lunch and I said, I got it.

And I proclaimed my genius.

I was like, and she looks at me and she goes, "I can't tell if you're serious."

[Jeannine laughing] - He was.

- And I was completely serious.

It's literally like... - It's piecing things together.

- It's like making a big, giant puzzle, where we just kind of connect the dots.

- And in this issue of "The Vamp", we had a general idea of what was gonna happen in the issue.

We knew where we wanted to go, but towards the very, very end, like page 27 or 28, we were like, "Oh, wait a minute, this isn't gonna work."

And then we had to like, figure out how to get to the end that we needed to get to.

- Right, right.

- So we kind of switched things around and changed a couple of things... - And what was funny about this is that, they said that our editor on the book was like, "Oh, we wanna feature the first few pages of the comic in previews."

So when you order books, so when people are ordering, they could see some of the art artwork.

Well, we hadn't even come up with a storyline yet.

So basically we wrote the first four pages having no idea what was gonna come after those first four pages, that was kind of a challenge.

- And to Daniel's credit too, our artists, when we were writing finally laying out and writing the rest of the issue, we went back and looked at the preview book and the pages that he had done.

And we found that they were slightly different from the layouts that we had provided him, and they were better.

- Yeah, yeah, he definitely kind of like took what we said and said, "Yeah that's cool, and that would convey the story, but I can do it way cooler this way."

And he did.

And that's something that I think I have always wanted, since I've worked in comics, I've always trusted the artists to be able to maybe do it better than what I'm picturing, and coming out of my head.

And I always tell them that when we first start working together is like, if you can read my words and you could basically figure out what I'm saying and do it better, then go ahead, knock yourself out, do it better.

- You talk about your time in comics working with you know, in the '90s and all the way up through to now.

And I'm just wondering, as we see that the trends change and we see that maybe now we're looking for these smaller stories that could be collected into a trade, when an editor gets in touch with you and says that they want to feature this story in previews, are they giving you a deadline just in general?

Like, "Hey, we've got a book that we want you to do, and this is the deadline for it."

Or are they soliciting an idea from you first, before they go ahead and say, let's put it in the schedule?

- Usually it's the idea first, or we come to them and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?"

And then they try to see if they can fit it into their schedule, or if they even wanna do it.

And then usually we're plotting and stuff before it even gets solicited.

"The Vamp" was quick.

- Yeah.

- I think they really knew that they wanted to do that as a one shot.

Like I said, we hadn't even come up with a storyline yet, it was solicited.

So we had to kind of fudge what the story was even about at that point, 'cause we really didn't know.

But yeah, "The Vamp" was fast.

Normally there's a little more time, little leeway.

Like, at least they have an idea when they're soliciting, they probably have the first issue or two under their belt before they're soliciting previews.

- And when you're working under a deadline, I know that perhaps a limited series is going to be different than an ongoing series.

So, I'm assuming they're giving you a reasonable deadline to get everything written and then a reasonable deadline for the art to get done.

Is it the same sort of pressure of a monthly book or are they able to kind of you know, if they haven't gotten the first issue and they can still push it back a little bit 'cause they haven't solicited who stores yet?

- I find that like mini-series, or one shots are a little bit easier, because it's almost like there's some leeway as to when it's gonna come out.

They're a little stricter when they, a lot of [indistinct] they have a very specific deadline as to when they want it to come out.

And that that's a little tighter, because you got to get the script written, you have to get it to the artist, and to the printer by the time that the book is scheduled to come out.

But usually they work with you.

Like for example, if our editor came to us and said, "Yeah, I want a Vamp mini-series, when can we have it?"

We would then sit down and look at our schedule in regards to what else we've got going on and say, I think we could probably deliver these four issues, or six issues or whatever, starting at this date.

And you'll get a comic like every six weeks after that, or something like that.

And then when they have artwork and script in hand, they usually then solicit, usually after like, the first two issues are done.

You still have to see the book, stop to show up in the previous book and stuff.

- And you know, I've been looking at your website Thomas and I know that you have a series of pros that you've written a bunch of different series that you've written just in novels.

- Yeah, I've written over 40 novels.

- And you've written a number of comics, and you've written adaptations of comics into novels.

So I'm wondering, as you're sort of cross pollinating all of these different styles, all of these different genres what similarities are there in the writing, and what differences are there that let you kind of flex different muscles as you work on them?

- I think the biggest difference between comics and books, is comics is way more fun.

[Jeannine laughing] Way more fun, there's a lot more free wheeling.

There's a lot more like, "Oh, wouldn't it be funny to do this and that?"

Whereas books are very, very, very solitary.

Yeah, I spend way, way too much time in my head.

I have to really focus, and concentrate, and kinda almost like lose myself in the material.

Whereas again, comics I'm working with a partner, or I'm working with an artist, and I could pick up the phone and say, "Hey, I just saw the latest five pages you just turned in, those look awesome."

And there's a lot more collaboration with comics.

Whereas books, you are solitary for four months, five months, however long it takes you to write the book.

You are like by yourself in your head, maybe your editor bothers you to say, "Can I have it sooner?"

Or something like that.

But yeah, those are the huge differences right there.

Comics is fun, books is hard.

Still fun, but much, much harder than comics.

Not to say that comics are easy, they're not, but they're more fun.

[laughing] - I've heard that actually from a number of different writers, that comics just provides an opportunity, it's more like playing in a band as opposed to recording a solo record, like Prince would all by himself.

- Yeah, that's it.

I enjoy the book writing process, we did, actually working with on our first novel together.

That was an interesting experience, 'cause again, I had somebody to bounce stuff off of.

So that made that experience a little more fun than the solitary stuff that I was used to.

So that was cool, and I've worked with collaborators before.

I've worked with Chris Golden on a bunch of projects.

But Chris and I, the difference between us working together was, Chris and I would plot, and talk, and go back, and then each go to our separate corners.

So, he would write the first two chapters and send those first chapters to me.

And then I would do my next two chapters trying to top his first two chapters, and it would just go back and forth like that.

Whereas when we were writing the novel together, it was literally sitting either side by side, or looking at each other on the screen writing.

I would write something and she would say, "How about this instead?"

And she would then erase what I wrote to write something better.

So yeah, so that was fun.

Again, there's that whole collaboration thing, which is really neat.

And then there's that whole solitary, tortured artist, by himself drinking way too early.

[laughing] - Well it's okay if it's coffee or prune juice.

As the two of you are working together, I'm imagining again, we take great pride in what we do, and I know if I get you know, someone gives me an idea, I might feel a little, my ego might get bruised.

So I'm wondering how you two kind of balance that out so you don't feel like you're stepping on each other's toes, and at the same time, it's this supportive, positive relationship as co-writers.

- I think for me, I think he's been really good about welcoming any ideas I have.

A lot of times I'll preface something with, "This might not be right."

Or, "I'm just gonna write something and see what happens."

- Yeah.

- And you've never... - Her famous one is, "This is really stupid."

- But.

- But, here we go.

And half the time it's stupid, but there's enough of a germ or a kernel in there to say, "Yeah, it's stupid, but what if we did this?"

And it ends up being exactly what we're looking for.

So, it's kinda cool.

- It's also kind of cool too, that when we always feel a little bit apprehensive about saying something and we might preface it by saying, "This is stupid, but."

But you know, at some point that confidence just kicks in because those kernels are there, the little nuggets of those ideas that blossom.

- That's why I always say it to her, when she'll say, "Oh, this is stupid."

I'm like, let me have it.

Let's see how stupid it actually is because there could be something there, that happened in "The Vamp" recently.

I can't tell you what it was specifically, but I think it was a piece of dialogue, or no a scene.

It was a scene with the orangutan butler flying the derivable.

How often do you get to say that?

She was like, "Wouldn't it be funny if."

And then you could see that she totally like dismissed it and wanted to move on, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, back that up, what was that again?

That's cool, that's funny, we should make that work because I think that's a really neat visual that helps define the character at the same time.

So not only is it funny, it's a moment of definition done in a panel.

So yeah, nothing's stupid, nothing's stupid.

- It's definitely hard for me overcoming that fear of saying something stupid.

Which given my history is insane, because I used to teach seventh grade.

And I would always encourage my students to talk, and to talk things out, and to participate.

And now, sometimes I feel like the shy seventh grader going, "I don't know about this, but."

So it's, yeah I'm trying to take my own advice and just put it out there and see what happens.

It's getting a little easier.

- They are telling us that we run out of time.

I wanna thank both of you for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's it's just flown by.

- No, really?

- It really has.

- Crazy.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture, we will see you again soon.

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