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Unknown
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hyper went back with another author conversation for Literary Hype podcast. And today we don't just have 1 or 2, we have three people who are working together on a new comic series, and you might recognize some of them.
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I'm talking to Smallville star Kristen Crook, as well as Peter Mooney and Eric Pitzer about their graphic novel series Black Star, which just released in August.
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This is a very noir horror dystopian magic vibes series that's really unique, and it's really starting out in a very cool way. So I got to talk to the three of them about their writing process at San Diego Comic-Con. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with the creators of Black Star.
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Unknown
Well, welcome to Literary Hype, where we get to talk about books and comic books. So it's very exciting to have you guys to talk about Blackstar. For anybody who hasn't already heard about this, what is this comic about?
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Unknown
Hello. So this
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comic is sort of an origin story of an alternate history of Winnipeg. It's this, magical secret society that our main character gets kind of pulled into.
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And it's set in the early 19th century, and it's kind of, the story of how our society rose and then crumbled in secret. And this kind of evolved while you guys were on set working on another show together. What was that moment like when you guys were like, we should do this? Well, it was funny because it started with all the like.
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Unknown
We started hearing stories about Winnipeg and and it was a day where we were in the car. I think I'm maybe we were driving, I don't know, sat or something. And I was like, well,
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sounds like this could be a show like Buffy and Winnipeg. And then we were like,
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maybe. And we all started working on it and it became this totally far more complex, bizarre, very like deep and wide kind of story about this alternate history.
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Unknown
What made Joe the right artist for this project really is as soon as we just saw his art, it sort of smelled what we had been seeing in our head and then even added to it in in ways that we had not seen before that. So it was a pretty immediate, instinctual reaction to seeing it. And really, there wasn't too much thought beyond that.
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Unknown
We were just like, oh, he's a guy. Yeah. He has like this, like gritty, realism to his work that is which works for this story. So particularly well. And he carries both the contemporary noir ish feeling with the much more Revenant past timeline stuff
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Unknown
It's very gritty art style. It is. Yeah. It very well to the story from what volume one has shown, it gets grittier. I had a feeling
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based on the description, I was like, oh, this is going to go places. But it also has a dystopian feel and dystopian is so like, what is it about this gritty genre that is speaking to people so much right now?
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Unknown
The world? I mean, it's a pretty obvious answer. I think it's yeah, it it is
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reflective of a pattern that we've seen before.
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And, yeah, I think, I think it's sort of ever present and, and especially now more than ever, I think people really resonate with what's going on. Was there an aspect of the law from Winnipeg that really spoke to you the most? It inspired you? I mean, I grew up in Winnipeg and the law was something that was just always there, ever present.
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Unknown
But specifically it was the law around one building, the Manitoba Legislative Building, which is this beautiful neoclassical grand government building, but it's filled with very strange symbols and all kinds of like
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Masonic inside jokes and winks and like things that you can see six, six, six, six, and weird stars and swirls and a
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ton of medusas for reasons I don't know.
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And there's a golden Hermes on the top. Like is Egyptian stone.
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Yeah. I'm sorry. Photos. Did you take in that building for research? We did it to. We did a tour. We did it too. And it was electric. Yeah, we had so much fun. Yeah. Did you pull pranks on each other during the tour? Cause I totally do that.
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But, like, we were, we were so serious. Actually, we were. We were like, really, really studying it,
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What was your research process like? Because this is a little bit historical. What was your favorite?
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I love research. Why did I know this is how I was feeling?
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know I it's interesting because I had taken I just got my history actually, I was in the process of getting my history degree while we were doing this, and so I had a bunch of Canadian history classes, and then I found it fascinating, especially the history of that part of Canada.
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Unknown
It is a really fascinating spot where it's at the tipping point to the west, and there was great rebellion in that area. And where these two rivers meet, where a story takes place, there's history that goes way back, and the Red River settlement is a big part of that. And also the Hudson's Bay company and the Northwest Company, which are fur trading companies, were battling each other.
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Unknown
And all of this was really fascinating. And nobody,
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nobody talks about it because they all say Canadian history is boring. Yeah, but that was all part of the that. Yeah, but that was all part of the research process. Was reading books and
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and looking at images. And Erik was more obsessed with the occult stuff because that exists there too.
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Unknown
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a there's a whole bunch of, you know, we use that. The Manitoba Archives are a great resource for us. And they were a lot, digitized and publicly available. And then there's a whole history of supernatural in Winnipeg, where they did seances, famous agencies in the 20s in a place called Hamilton House, where Arthur Conan Doyle traveled by boat, all the way.
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Unknown
Well, not all the way to Winnipeg, but across the seas. And then, to take flight and to to to participate in these agencies. And there's photographs of it and all of so there's a real history of this kind of. Yeah, supernatural quality to the town, which sort of echoed what we felt moving around the place as well.
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Unknown
When you're writing with one other person, it's a challenge. How did you guys manage to write with three of you and make sure it all comes out the way all three of you want this story to go? Yeah, it's really interesting because in some ways it's more of a scheduling challenge, but in another way, like three is kind of a nice number to to write with because there's sort of, of that nice sort of swirling of ideas like, as opposed to just a back and forth, we could really get into things between the three of us.
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Unknown
And then we broke all the story together, like we, we, decided, you know, scene by scene, page by page, panel by panel, what it would look like. And then we'd kind of divvy up the scriptwriting, but then trade the scripts back and forth. So now it's really hard to even tell who's this, who is and what's his, what in this big, you know, in the hopper for the actors.
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Unknown
What did you learn about writing from being an actor that helped you create this in a more realistic fashion? Well, acting is being inside character, and writing comes hopefully first from character, or at least the movement of the story at the way that a, reader comes in and understands anything. Part is obviously important, but but it's not.
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Unknown
I think character is really, for me, the entry point and understanding how to build and moves and, grow for substantive characters. Yeah. And I think is it was a challenge in this because the, the story having 22 pages to tell any given story, you're moving at a real clip. But then I think between all of us, we had a real, motivation to not do any heavy handed expositional.
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Unknown
We wanted them to still feel like they were real people talking to each other. And I think that kind of having the experience of having acted and been on set and said things, said lines that are easier to say and lines that are harder to say, we wanted our characters, even though they're drawn to have easier lines, to say, what piece of you made it into the main character?
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Unknown
Oh, and the main character,
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Peters. The Jets tattoos on his hands, very deep.
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Unknown
don't know. I think I'm talking to you on Mike now. I think that honestly, all of us are in all of it. It's hard to pull a specific character trait, and I think there are parts of all of our lives and lived experiences that come through in the story.
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Unknown
But it's not specific to any one thing or any one person.
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Unknown
That's a smart answer.
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Unknown
Yeah. Well, since this is literary hype, got to ask what books and comics are you hyped about right now.
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Right now my I have a book club. Am I book club
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is reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras, which is a controversial text, but an important one.
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And that's been a really fascinating discussion for all of us. Yeah, I've been on a really good run lately. I just finished the sister's, stoner bit of a throwback. Just. I've loved it so much.
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Unknown
So reading that one. Yeah, it's an international bestseller again.
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Somehow I saw that at my, my local, bookstore. Very exciting.
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And, angel down was excellent.
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I've read recently, The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time, which again, is also having.
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Yeah, it's and it is a modern adventure. It's like
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amazing. And then, and I'm currently reading, Archer of Nights by Mariana Enriquez, Argentinian author. And it's extraordinary so far. Yeah, really, really good.
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Unknown
Well, thanks so much for taking time to talk to literary hype about Blackstar. Yeah, thanks for having us. Let's
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Thanks again to Kristen, Peter, and Eric for hanging out with me at San Diego Comic-Con to talk all about Black Star.
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if you want to check out Black Star, the links to do so are down below. And you can also hit up a local comic store and see if they've got it in stock.
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If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype Podcast. Give us some stars, leave a review and share it with a friend.
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Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.
