Sketching Our Fears and Hopes

Bam-Kapow sat down with Marc Haines, one of the growing talents in indie comics. Through his own studio, Deadly World Productions, he’s been the artist and part creator for The Colony, writer and artist for the convention-shunning Sketch, and inker for the comic Kreetor. To find out more, and to purchase Marc’s comics, go to www.repercussioncomics.com and check out all the great comics there.

 

I met Marc at a Taco Cabana to discuss where he’s been, what he’s doing now and what lies ahead. Hat backwards, leaning forward excitedly Marc was every bit the energetic artist. With Spanish music blaring in the background, I spoke with him as we ate:

 

Bam-Kapow: How long have you been making comics?

 

Marc Haines: When I was in 8^th grade, 7^th grade, hell, I used to draw comics all the time. You know, we made up our own superheroes and our own stories. And we just took pieces of paper: drew mini-size and folded them in half, or we just took a bunch of pieces of paper: stapled them together using oversized construction paper. So, I’ve been making comics since the 7^th grade or so.

 

BKapow: What was the first comic you got published?

 

MH: The first one I got published was back in San Francisco. That was Golden Dragon for Synchronicity Comics. Michael Martin was the writer, and he actually went on to become Marvel Comic’s west coast sales representative. The guy got all this great preview art. Like when Dale Keown was drawing Hulk. We got to see all that art before anyone else. So 1989 was my big breakout year. I was doing comic strips in the newspaper, doing magazine illustrations out there. But my first published comic was that Golden Dragon.

 

BKapow: You have two comics out right now. Let’s start with The Colony. Tell the readers a little bit about it.

 

MH: The Colony is really cool. Jason DeGroot is the writer and this guy is probably one of the more talented kids I work with. When I met him, I was really kind of apprehensive cause he wrote all this really child friendly, touchy, feely. You know, really good storyline stuff.

 

BKapow: Not at all like The Colony.

 

MH: No, and the stuff I had an idea for The Colony was really contemporary, adult, and political. I’d never seen Jason’s work on that. I gave him the idea on The Colony and he took it and wrote this incredible script, and we worked really well together because I would have certain paraphrases or lines of dialogue that I wanted him to use. Then he’d actually use it and make it fit into the rest of the storyline that worked really well. It’s got espionage…it’s got elements of Greek tragedy…it’s got monsters…it’s got a little bit of sex. It’s got a little bit of something for everybody.

 

It’s a story of a race of beings that have been coexisting with the major powers since the beginning of time. It’s one of the offspring of Cain and Abel stories. Cain killed Abel and then he went off and had two sons, one that wasn’t really mentioned in the Bible because he went back into the Garden of Eden and ate of the fruit and gorged himself. His lineage was cursed forever more. There was no reconciliation with God. His descendants became cursed with the attributes of zombies, werewolves, and vampires.

 

BKapow: All the fun stuff.

 

MH: Yeah, all the good stuff. What happened is, as they kept themselves sequestered away from humanity they made pacts with the governments, like the Roman Empire and things like that. As those crumbled and fell, they had to move and follow the next major power so they could strike up a peace alliance.

 

BKapow: Tell us about the main character. Who is he?

 

MH: The main character is Jason Thorne. Jason is an operative for Project Nomad. Basically he ties up dirty loose ends. If a political leader was put away in witness relocation after a coup and they were afraid he was talking then Project Nomad would send Jason in to tidy things up, make all those things disappear. He is pretty much removed from humanity. He’s just so dispassionate about his job, and he wants out. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for but he knows this isn’t it.

 

So his boss Director Strom, who you find out is a complete bastard, sends him on his last mission. He tells Jason about the colony, he shows him a zombie, Jason doesn’t believe it, and he tells Jason, “You do this last job and you’re done. No strings attached.”

 

BKapow: Of course, if they say that then that means there MUST be strings attached.

 

MH: Cause we know that’s never true. What’s Jason’s job? Cleaning up loose ends.

 

So Jason goes to the Colony to assassinate the upcoming regent. Every three hundred years, the Colony crowns a new regent, and Jason goes as a representative to videotape this coronation. Kind of like a good faith ambassador. His true motives are to kill and throw everything into turmoil. What ultimately ends up happening, he goes to kill this guy and finds out he’s already dead. Turns out Jason is truly the heir to the throne.

 

I don’t want to get too much into what’s gonna happen in the story, but there were some exchanges, concessions, and compromises made early on where babies were exchanged and raised as the other’s son. Jason is actually the true son of Cuspus Infusco.

 

BKapow: We’ll let the readers find out who those two are. How many issues in the series are there?

 

MH: There are four issues. There is the introduction where you learn who Jason is and all the main characters in the real world. The first issue ends with [Jason] going to the Colony.

 

The second issue picks up where we actually go through a tour of the Colony. His assistant Ganz is killed, and Jason meets Orexis, who is destined to be his bride. It’s at the end of issue two when we learn that Jason is really the true son.

 

BKapow: Are there any plans for a Colony part two after this mini-series?

 

MH: Oh yeah, I’ve got the second part. The second part is even cooler than the first. I wanna get part one done because part two is another four issue series. It’s called Blood Thorne: the Reign of Jason Thorne. It is a hundred years after the first mini-series.

 

BKapow: Tell us a little bit about Repercussion Comics.

 

MH: Jason DeGroot and I have kind of reformulated. Jason started out doing Repercussion with one vision and some elements kind of fell apart. You know how comic company’s go, you’ve been there. And we just sort of revitalized and we’ve co-branded. Basically, Repercussion is like a parent banner. We’re dealing with a guy out of Milwaukee, Alan Evans, with Workshed Studios. We’re taking my Deadly World Productions banner underneath Repercussion and parenting it. We’ve actually got more people coming to us now. We’ve got other people coming who want to publish stuff with us under the Repercussion banner. Cause we made the commitment to go monthly. I mean we just had an order for 51 issues of our books to go to Midtown Comics in Times Square.

 

BKapow: Where can readers buy your comics?

 

MH: Just go to Repercussioncomics.com. We got an online store there with all the back-issues. We’re going to a second printing of The Colony #1. Something I never thought would happen. The first printing was okay, but I had done it real quick. I didn’t have a mastery of Photoshop and Illustrator at the time. So I went back and redid a lot of the artwork. Not redrew but just retooled. I actually lettered and illustrated it this time so all of the sound effects and word bubbles look so much more professional. I also redid the cover.

 

BKapow: Your second comic out right now, Sketch, is getting a lot of great reviews out there (including from us). Can you explain the concept behind it for those not in the know?

 

MH: I always wanted to do a parody kid story. Initially, it was going to be really cartoony, and it was called Jimmy Bigby had bad things in his head,” where he was going to be the kid on the playground that everybody picked on. These demons would actually come out his head and attack these kids, and I thought, “That’s a little dark.” Then I started talking to some writers cause I’d never actually wrote my own stuff. Then someone said something that’s stuck with me, “Write what you know best.”

 

So what I did was made it semi-autobiographical. I took really whacked out elements of my own childhood, cause some bad stuff happened. I pulled in some elements from kids I knew and things that happened to other people, and it just came out as this really SICK story. This poor kid, his dad leaves him and his mom is going through a string of relationships. When his parents are away, he gets locked in the closet. He has no friends except for the television set.

 

BKapow: So is Jimmy ever gonna catch a break?

 

MH: [Chuckles]

 

I can’t say. Yeah, let’s just say he meets the girl of his dreams in issue three: a woman police psychologist who actually wants to help him. She’s a social worker and shows him that these people, his friends, are inside his head, literally.

 

BKapow: Each issue is set up as a point in Jimmy’s life?

 

MH: Yeah, the first issue is called “8” and what it did, was take Jimmy Bigby from the time he was in his mother’s womb till the time he was eight, the first time he realized his power were manifested. That last page is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever created.

 

The second issue is Sketch @ 15; kind of like my homage to Josh Howard, his Dead@17. He got a big kick out of it when I showed it to him. It’s going to be Jimmy at 15 and you know; everyone had crappy times at high school. It’s going to be the lynchpin when Jimmy’s friends take over his life.

 

The third issue, “21”, is going to be done in weird fugues. You open up the first page and it’s going to be black. You’re going to be going, “What the hell is this? This is a comic book?” Jimmy’s going to be popping in and out of his reality. In one scene you’ll the audience from his point of view and then it’ll blackout again. Then you’ll see him driving a motorcycle going 100 miles an hour with some girl hanging on him.

 

BKapow: So he’s going to be taking a backseat to his own life?

 

MH: Absolutely. His friends have taken over completely. He’s only getting glimpses to his life. The second one is like he’s watching everything on television but in the third one, he’s not in control at all. He wakes up in a completely horrible situation where someone has been murdered and he doesn’t know what has really happened. Did he do it? Did his friends do it? Has he been psycho all along? Then he meets the social worker and she tries to help him out with his problems. You find out all his friends are just inside his head…maybe. The last page is a huge payoff.

 

BKapow: So how long are we going to be following Jimmy?

 

MH: Just until he’s 21. Just three issues. I did that cause I really don’t know where to take Jimmy next. I almost want to take him as a character into a superhero book. I wanted to do it reality based where it wasn’t tied to anything so that if anyone wanted to take him and use him they could. There would be use for Sketch down the road.

 

BKapow: You use a lot of experimental techniques here in Sketch, something that’s been a hallmark of your style in the past couple of years. Is the format of Sketch something you think you could bring to a different story?

 

MH: The mixed media: I took illustrations, I took photographs, I took graphics, I did all sorts of juxtapositions of styles and medias, and it just lead itself to this disjointed state of mind this kid’s got. I like the way it works but I’m not sure it’d work with something else. Maybe on a smaller scale. People are starting to pick up on the mixed media and use it regularly. Reflections in car windows and so on, but nothing like what was going on in Sketch.

 

BKapow: What’s next for you? What’s on the horizon?

 

MH: [Laughs]

 

I didn’t expect to get this far, man. I just wanted to draw one more comic book before I died. I end up getting three out and now I’m inking the work for Kreetor by Jason DeGroot and penciled by Dan Philips. Dan’s pencils have grown by leaps and bounds. What’s really neat is I’ve come to learn how to exorcise judgment. I don’t have to ink every line; I can back it out in Photoshop. He’s just doing it cause he feels it and I know he’s got that creative thing cause I love to do penciling too. Man, I think I enjoy inking this better than penciling my own stuff!

 

BKapow: The dream is always to be able to do comics fulltime, but until that day comes, what’s your day job?

 

MH: I’m a sales manager for Cisco foods. I spent twenty years in the kitchen as a chef. Then I started selling groceries cause I knew the product and I knew the chefs.

 

BKapow: Twenty years as a chef huh? So what are you better at? Making food or making comics?

 

MH: [Chuckles]

 

That’s gonna be on the audience. Cooking definitely cause I did that for twenty years, but then I’ve been making comics for thirty…

 

BKapow: Ah come on, give us a definitive answer. [Laughs] You’re an artist at both.

 

MH: I’ll have to say cooking. Cause I know I’ll dust anybody in that any day of the week.

 

[Laughs]