Cully Hamner:... the story of a mob family being threatened by a serial killer who is, basically, hacking his way up the ranks. Two lieutenants of this family, brothers Billy and Tony Morricone know that sooner or later their father, the "Don" or head of the mob, is next. There's a lot of suspicion toward everyone in the family, because they figure that the killer must be someone close. When the secret is revealed, it turns out to be a really bizarre family thing. That's about all I'm willing to say, [except that] there are going to be a lot of surprises in this.
Brave is going to run for four issues, then it will run as four backup stories in Adam Hughes' book No One. Then, after that, I have plans for another miniseries if Dark Horse will let me do it, if people like the miniseries and they buy it.
Bruce Costa: Why a mob story?
Hamner: I dunno, I guess I've always liked crime stories: crime movies, crime comics, crime books. I read a lot of nonfiction about the mob, even more so since I started doing research about this book.
Costa: The research must have been fascinating.
Hamner: It was very interesting. I've had the basic core of this idea probably since I was around 19 or 20 years old. The mob stuff didn't come into play until I really started to enjoy the crime dramas that I've seen. The crime that you see nowadays is a lot more available to us informationally because we see it daily in the news and on TV. There was a lot more mystery about it back in the old days when the Italian mobs and the Irish mobs were prevalent, simply because you didn't have the access to information that you have now. It was kept secret. The existence of the Mafia was not even acknowledged in the media until the '50s or '60s.
Costa: Which crime dramas had the greatest influence on your development as a storyteller?
Hamner: I really liked Goodfellows, I really liked Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, and, of course, the ones that everyone is going to mention -- Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The Godfather trilogy, the seminal modern mob movies, are great ones. The first two made a real impression on me. Pretty much any Scorcese mob film. I don't know if they're realistic, but he seems to be able to create an aura of believability more so than a lot of people can. Tarantino, of course, is able to somehow mix humor in. I'm not quite sure how he does that, but he does it.
Costa: Is there a Native American aspect to Brave?
Hamner: Aha! Well, you'll have to read the story to find that out!
Costa: This is your first effort at writing comics. What drove you to do that? Have you always wanted to write?
Hamner: I think it was always in the back of my head. I used to write a lot in high school, and have written lots of short stories, including a couple of one-act plays that I've never shown anyone. I don't know if I've always wanted to be a writer, but I always knew that I wanted to be involved in stories and storytelling.
I always liked looking in a comic book and seeing the writer and the artist credited separately, and in between their credits it would say "co-plotters." It was the coolest thing to see "Claremont and Byrne, co-plotters" or "Wolfman and Perez, co-plotters." That's something that seems to have almost disappeared from comics right now. I still have stories that I want to tell, and some of the other books I've worked on I've contributed story ideas to, but I never got a credit on them or anything. This may seem a little arrogant, but there have been so many times that I've seen a story come together, and I've thought to myself that it could be a lot better, but I didn't have much say in it. So now it's time to put my money where my mouth is, write a story, and see if I can do as well. I will say that writing is much harder than anybody gives it credit for. It is one of the most daunting things that I have ever done.
It's taken me a while to knock all of the kinks out of the story, but I learned a lot, and not just on the writing side of it but on the drawing side as well. It's kind of funny -- something that Jason Pearson said to me a while back: "You know, if everybody would give me a huge crowd scene to draw, I would probably bitch and whine and complain about it for days. And then, with my first writing assignment, on page one, I write myself a crowd scene!" It's absolutely true -- sometimes things need to be shown. You write them in and there's no way to get around it. It's a hard job.
Costa: I guess you're in the unusual position of knowing how the artist is going to react to the script...
Hamner: Well I don't have to apologize to myself for anything! I can probably knock myself around a lot and give myself some hard stuff to draw. But the cool thing is that I've cut out the middleman. I don't have to communicate with someone else the kind of story I want to tell and the way I want to tell it. I can do what I want to do. And I think I've gotten to the point now where I know how to tell it. I'm almost glad that I didn't do this book two years ago, or three years ago when we originally proposed it, because I don't know if I would have been able to service the story the way I want to now. I think that I'm a lot more skilled now and a lot more disciplined. I think it'll be a lot better now. I've learned a lot.
Costa: Cully, I've got to tell you, I adore your artwork.
Hamner: Oh, well thank you very much! That's what makes it worthwhile, right there.
Costa: I waited as long into the interview as I could to say this [laughter], but your work is super clean and clear. One of the things that I notice immediately is your all-too-rare ability to draw human faces...
Hamner: Well, you know, I work on that. One thing you can't do when you're in a shop like Gaijin Studios is allow yourself to hack, or allow yourself to fall down on the job. I always have to try to keep improving what I do. You know, when you've got people like Brian Stelfreeze and Adam Hughes and Jason Pearson in the studio you really can't afford to say, "Eh, I'm good enough." And everybody here feels that way, as if they can't be satisfied with what they've got. They've got to keep improving. We may not be the fastest artists in the world, and you may not see our work every month, but I really think that when you do see it you get your money's worth. You look at the stuff that we do and you say, "Hey, that's damn good stuff."
Costa: And I would hope that, as a result of that philosophy, you're producing stuff that you are able to live with. I mean, this stuff exists in print forever...
Hamner: Well, I'm usually satisfied with it for a couple of months, then I start tearing myself down. I can't look at my Firearm stuff now. I can't look at it; I don't like it. It's funny because I look at the Brave stuff right now and I'm fairly pleased with it, but I just know that after it comes out, give it a couple of months, and I'll be tearing that down too.
Costa: As they say in writing circles, the moment that stops happening, you stop growing as a creator.
Hamner: Oh, yeah -- and it's really getting to be the same way with writing, too. I look at some of the drafts of Brave that I wrote a year ago and I say, "What was I thinking?" I kept trying to squeeze cliches into a story that was flouncing a lot of conventions anyway.
It's not an essentially heroic story, it's more of a tragic story. It think that's kind of unusual because, in comics, the tragedy is normally some sort of impetus for heroics. Really there's nobody heroic in the story. Everybody's pretty much got an agenda, except for maybe one character. And Brave himself is pretty irredeemable. He's a tragic character who has been completely wronged by other people and he deals with it in a completely unhealthy way. He's crazy. The character is literally crazy.
I do hope you enjoy it if you get hold of it when it comes out.
Costa: I have little doubt. To go back to your art, it's so refreshing to me to see someone who understands camera angles and all of the storytelling techniques that are necessary and still can take the time to draw every crevice in the soles of a pair of hiking books.
Hamner: [laughing] Yep, that's why I'm so damned slow...
You know, I find that I care so much about what it looks like and how it reads that I have a real hard time letting it go before I'm satisfied with it. And that is a bad thing in some circles. If I were doing a monthly book I would not be able to do that. In fact, if you go back and look at a lot of my monthly books, you'll find that I wasn't able to pay attention to that kind of stuff. What I really want to do (and I know this is impossible, but) what I'm shooting for is just to do something that's relatively unassailable in story and art. Something that you can't point to any glaring errors in it. One of these days I'm going to have to loosen up, but since I've got so much riding on this, I want this to be about as perfect as I can make it.
Costa: Your focus is evident.
Hamner: Sometimes I wish I could be even more focused on it, but then I start second guessing myself and I've got to back off a little bit. But I do think this is going to be a good book. I think the people that buy it and read it are going to enjoy it.
Costa: And you've got Adam Hughes' No One as a backup!
Hamner: Yes -- more of Adam's great work. This is something he came up with a couple of years ago and, I can tell you, I've rarely seen him as excited as he is with this. And you should see the stuff he's doing. It's just... amazing. And like I said before, when you're in a studio full of amazing guys, you've always got to try to be amazing. You can't just go, "Well, I'm decent." You can't stop until what you're doing is, at the very least, incredible. [laughter]