Rise of The Red Star – Part 2

Continued from Part 1

DT: What impact does the use of the CGI have on your storytelling style — what does it let you do that you don’t think you’d be able to do otherwise?

BK: The CG allows for a bolder and richer environment that our characters can interact in. While drawing these same aspects could be outstanding too, the fact that someone different altogether renders them it gives us chance to make the vehicles and backgrounds more elaborate and therefore more satisfying to the eye. To hand draw them would be prohibitive at best.

CG: CGI (computer generated imagery) is a highly versatile tool. To give an example of its possibilities, think about the many ways in which you may have seen it used already. From way back in the ballroom-waltz scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, all the way up to Pixar’s Toy Story series, back to the photo-real universe of George Lucas, etc. etc. You can do flat, graphic styles, photo-real styles, strange surreal styles, there is no end. For Team Red Star, it was a matter of finding a way to use CG (computer graphics) to emphasize the vast scope and mythic scale of the story. The 3D Artist, Allen Coulter, was a rare find. We met while working on a Playstation game for Activision (Pitfall 3D) and really enjoyed each other’s work. We decided to embark on this crazy experiment and test results were so stunning that they drove us enthusiastically forward into the process. Using CG has definitely given me license to open up the pages in a way that I’ve always wanted to. During my Star Wars work, I was constantly at odds with my writers over panel count on a page. I wanted to redefine ‘epic scale’ as far as comics were concerned. I wanted to have a greater sense of drama and emotional impact throughout the story.

For me, this meant taking shots that would traditionally be quite small and blowing them up to gigantic proportion. In issue one for example, pages 10-11 begin with a bandit-shot of Maya’s eyes spread across both pages. (See the production layout sketch and the final spread.) In any other comic, such a shot is a throwaway, sacrificed by the urge to do yet another clinched-teeth, fists-balled, leaping at the camera fight scene. Where most comics choose plot-based action, we choose character-based drama. Also, we arrive at this extreme close-up from having been out in the desert with miles and miles of distance between us and the horizon, with massive ships looming overhead. So not only are the sizes of the panels extreme, but the range of ‘motion’ between panels (or ‘cuts’ as we like to say) is also extreme.

Another aspect of our process that is just as ‘CG’ as ‘3D’ is Photoshop. Our colorist, the infamous Snakebite came on to the project to color the figures and most non-3D aspects of each page, not to mention the nuts and bolts compositing work that takes Allen’s 3D plates and my 2D drawings and integrates them into what have become the final composites. There are not many colorists in the industry that could pull off such a trick. To be able to color figures with the subtlety necessary to integrate them into a 3D environment is by no means automatic and demands a highly experienced sensibility.

For both Allen and Snakebite, comics are a kind of hot mistress that they just can’t bring themselves to get rid of. They’re both married to animation, Allen directs 3D, and Snake is being groomed by some great veterans of the traditional 2D animation world to be an art director for that field. We’ll see how long I can hang on to these madmen. At this point in my career, I am a big fan of the big panel and two-page spread. Such panels have a bad rap in comics but this is, in my mind, ignorance. Many people have this old idea in their head that comics is about a lot of panels on a page and I think such a prejudice is hilarious. Using 3D would be a waste if the panels weren’t big enough to showcase the wonderful work that my 3D artist, Allen Coulter, and my colorist Snakebite are doing.

DT: Speaking of big panels and two panel spreads — I have read or heard several people comment that as a result of those spreads, each issue reads very quickly. How do you use a big spread to maximize storytelling value? Is this an issue that concerns you? And do you think the traditional comic magazine is the right format for a character-driven drama as opposed to a plot-driven action story?

CG: I’m always surprised when someone says to me at a convention “Hey, this book reads too quick– I want more!” It was really bothering me until Snakebite said, “It ain’t never a problem when your audience is screaming for more of what you’re puttin’ out.” He was absolutely right– it’s not that we’re giving less to the readers, in fact every issue of The Red Star has more pages in its story than almost every comic out there. We average 24-26 pages of story an issue as compared to the typical 22 pages.

Now, if my team is putting out 26 page stories that are so captivating that they read like 12 page stories, and if the rest of the industry is stretching out 22 pages that seem to go on forever, which team is achieving drama? Which team is really getting into the heads of the readers and not letting them put the book down?

As for the last part of the question, I definitely think that the 32-page format is limited. When I read Shirow’s ‘Appleseed’ and a single conversation scene can be 12 pages long, or a fight scene go on for 40, I get very jealous. Jealous of the lengthy format, in which true exploration of dramatic theme can occur, and very jealous of Shirow’s culture and market. In Japan, comics are not demonized– comics readers are not made to feel ashamed of supporting this form of entertainment. This being said, the standard American pamphlet of 32 pages per story is only as good as the creators working within such limitations. Length is not necessary for greatness, nor does it guarantee it. Haiku, for example, is incredibly evocative; and has never needed any more syllables than the form calls for.

DT: Since the allegorical nature of the story has been heavily promoted, how do you balance fidelity to history (since people might be reading the book expecting to learn some ‘truth’ about the USSR) with the needs of the story you want to tell (since you do want to do more than a mere retelling)?

BK: I don’t think that these are mutually exclusive endeavors. One can maintain a fidelity to history and still tell a story within that fabric without upsetting the balance of truth and art. Our characters are fictitious just as Chekhov’s characters are fictitious and just as Joyce’s characters are fictitious, yet those authors characters still paint a picture of what pre revolution Russia was like and what Dublin was like respectively. In fact Joyce’s stories were banned from publication for 7 years due to its authenticity and brutal honesty of an early 20th century Ireland. Our story does no less in the way of illuminating a Russia besieged with terrible leaders–even within a framework of fantasy sci-fi.

CG: Good question. There was a time when I thought that I would not emphasize the allegorical aspect for just that reason. I did have a choice, and my writing partner Bradley Kayl and I gave it a lot of thought. Should we not mention the source material, in this case Russian History, but simply let the work go forward as yet another action tale in the comics world? Should we let people figure it out for themselves? Will they? However, as the writing process continued, I realized that this story owed so much to its source, and that I simply couldn’t bring myself to silence the voices that had inspired it: The photographs of the baby-faced soldiers that gave their lives to defeating Hitler on the eastern front, the letters of the artists pleading to Stalin to let them live, or at least allow their work to be seen by the public, the testament of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as he spoke of the millions of his people that were sacrificed on the pyre of Bolshevik modernization; the list is so vast that it is for all intents and purposes infinite. I was too eager to bring these lives to light in any way possible. This choice has turned out to be incredibly satisfying for us and, thankfully so far, our readers. I suppose a lot of writers would consider this a shackle, but for us it’s been pure joy. Just as our visuals integrate 2D and 3D elements into a working image, our words have integrated fact and fiction into a narrative that continues to surprise us with its expansive nature. One example, yet to be published by us, takes us to a very crucial moment in the history of 20th Century Russia, the arrest and murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. At first mention, this sounds like something that would make very dry comics material. Something that Fantagraphics would put out by Joe Sacco, someone whose work I very much enjoy but would definitely be considered esoteric by the larger comics audience–well, at least by those who knew the word ‘esoteric’ (laughter). Yet, through our style of allegory, the murder of the Tsar, and many other such historic events will be adapted to the pages of The Red Star in a very exciting, very dramatic fashion.

The trick is making the story captivating for both those who know the history and those who don’t. There’s the rub, since we’re not pointing out which aspects of the story are metaphor and which are historic. That’s up to the reader, and represents our attempt to engage the audience. What is portrayed on the pages as metaphor is an expression of a historic event. An example is Maya’s transformation in Issue #1. On the surface, it’s a very attractive woman transforming herself into a pillar of destructive energy, but in metaphor, all soldiers that kill for their nation are in fact pulling off such a trick. Her dialogue, “Then, thankfully, the mind is silenced…I am the heat of my nation’s anger…the burning will of the state.” We all are very comfortable in the West with our notion that ‘those poor Russians had to suffer under the despotic communists’ but what we don’t realize is how such self-righteous pity blinds us to our own patriotic shackles. Maya’s loyalty at the cost of her individuality is something that all humans are prone to. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it is now our jingoistic ignorance that should be pitied. We hope that through exploration of these themes that we stir in the readers a need to question the story in such a way that the historic lesson is made clear. It’s ambitious, but it’s where our head trip as artists happens to be right now. So far, thankfully, we have found an expanding readership that appreciates the enigmatic nature of the stories. Hopefully this continues…if not, who knows, maybe in a year we’ll be jaded by human ignorance and get jobs doing swimsuit issues for Top Cow (laughter).

Continued in Part 3