I had to wait a couple of days to get a preview of the final lettered pages, and when I finally got them on my desk, I was almost overjoyed to discover I had nothing to fear after all -- Decapitator is a fun read, very full of boy-type fun things like big monsters and robot babes, but it also has a surprisingly well though out plot, and some really interesting twists that added just the right amount of depth to the story without making it convoluted. Whew, I thought to myself. I can enjoy this one after all. And I did. Talking with Randy was a pleasure, and so was reading the first couple of issues of Decapitator. Be sure to click over to the features section and check out our two-part feature on the making of Decapitator and Randy's other full-time job, sculpting collectors' art pieces.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: What was the premise behind the Decapitator story? And where did your ideas for it come from?
Randy Bowen: Well it started off just as a one shot model kit. Originally I had written down just a brief story description. But, this is the strange part: about a year or two after I finished sculpting the original piece, I was watching a TV program narrated by Leonard Nimoy called Ancient Mysteries. It was a show about this lost tribe of Aztecs called the Mochã and their god just happened to be called the Decapitator.
SG:Oh wow.
RB:I was just floored, and then they showed carvings on the wall. Strangely it looked somewhat like what I had sculpted. He had a skull-like face and everything. So at the time I was looking for a more complete story, and this was going to be my angle. Somehow I had to get him back on Earth and have him become a deity to this ancient people.
SG:That's pretty amazing that you found a historical reference to somebody named the Decapitator.
RB:Yeah, it freaked me out.
SG: So, then, you didn't have the whole idea for the comic and the premise of the character when you first developed the idea of the Decapitator.
RB:Right.
SG:What were you trying to do with the character when you first created him?
RB:I simply started sculpting one night, just for fun (which I rarely get to do), and this is going to be a weird interview because I'm a sculptor who did a comic book. But when I started out, it was going to be a Viking, and by the time my wife woke up the next day, it was the Decapitator. So it was sort of a stream of consciousness kind of a thing going on where I just started sculpting, and that's what happened. Lack of sleep.
SG:I noticed you mentioned in the script how it's essentially something that steps right out of your nightmare.
RB:Um hum.
SG:Is that kind of what you were going for, just something to scare the hell out of somebody?
RB:Yeah, I've always been a fan of Predator, Aliens, Frankenstein, and big monsters in general, so I guess it just came out of my imagination.
SG:And so this is the first comic you've worked on, right?
RB:Yeah, the first one I've actually written.
SG:Do you think you're going to want to do more after your experience doing Decapitator?
RB:Yeah, I think so. Actually, this gave me the confidence to do a couple of other story lines on some sculpture things. I did a storybook that went with a character called The Jimmy Legs. He's another big monster, and there's sort of an obtuse link to The Decapitator in that story also.
SG:Let's talk about the story itself a little. What's the concept behind Decapitator, and who are the Monster Lords?
RB:It's basically an excuse to have giant monsters knocking the crap out of each other. It's sort of like an outer space version of Gladiators and instead of having emperors, there are these guys called Keepers. They're the antagonists who pit these monsters against each other, and then they place their bets and that sort of thing. I was trying to come up with something that should it become popular enough, it could work as a video game or have other sorts of marketing tie-ins.
SG:And you kind of structured the book to look like a video game too.
RB:A little bit. I mean there are different landscapes. There are different planets. There's different opponents, so it's very much condusive to doing some sort of a video game eventually.
SG:Uh huh, and you also use a lot of different artists.
RB:Yes.
SG:I'm kind of curious. Not only are you using a lot of different artists, they're all very talented and pretty exceptional in their field. How did you get all those guys to help out with this?
RB:Well, some of the more, I guess, noteworthy guys like Kelley Jones and Mike Mignola, Doug Mahnke, I've worked on sculpture projects with all these guys and we've become friends. So that's how I pulled in the big guns, and one of the reasons we are using so many artists instead of just one is that we wanted to get four issues out by this summer and a lot of these guys have really busy schedules. So we figured using more than one artist was a fast way to do it.
SG:It's also kind of a visual treat to see so many different styles on one title. That's kind of unique. And considering this is kind of your baby, did you have . . .
RB:A very ugly baby (laughs).
SG:Yeah, he is an ugly baby (laughs). But did you have a hard time turning your idea over to the hands of other artists?
RB:No, not at all. I wanted them to give their own take on it. This thing was never designed really to be drawn as a comic, you know. I had no idea when I first sculpted it that it was going to be anything other than a one shot sculpture, so I knew that it would have to be simplified or modified so that it would be easier to draw.
SG:Yeah, and it's also fairly amorphous.
RB:Yeah.
SG:He's always changing into different things. Sometimes he's got tentacles, and sometimes he's got gigantic lobster claws. . .
RB:Yeah, so you get a little bit of interest there, and as far as not being bored drawing the same thing over and over again, you get something new to work with really whenever you want.
SG:Yeah, and if you turn it over to somebody like Kelley Jones, and say, "Make this scary Kelley". . . (laughs)
RB:Yeah, yeah, Kelley's butterflies are scary (laughs).
SG:Exactly. He would obviously do some really good things with that. Why don't you talk about the whole concept of the story. This is going to come out about a month and a half before the comic is issued, so it might be kind of fun if you gave a little bit of a background, like what happens in the story and the elements we're dealing with and stuff like that.
RB:Sure. Well even though it's called Decapitator and it has some very, you know, violent, obvious overtones to it, I still wanted it to follow a basic plotline as all classic mythology does. I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell -- you know, the "Hero with a Thousand Faces" -- he's a guy that George Lucas followed and many other people have followed in patterning their stories. Anyway, there are certain commonalities to all mythology and part of that is you have (usually) a youth of some sort who embarks on a journey. He goes through some sort of turmoil and in the end has to make some sort of sacrifice to regain his humanity. So that's the big overview. The gut-level comic book overview is there's a kid who gets his brain removed, he becomes a giant monster, fights other giant monsters, travels through time and gets to date a robotic vixen. So, there's two ways to look at it I guess.
SG:Yeah. And there's a lot of childhood/boyhood fantasy going on there, too. It's not very subtle (laughs).
RB: (laughs)
SG:I was almost shocked when I read the first issue and realized that you're taking the brain out of a 13-year-old.
RB:Yeah.
SG:That's not something you generally see on the page of a comic.
RB:Well, who knows. I have always liked Frankenstein. I've always liked, you know, Universal Monsters and as I look at the book, as I see the art that these guys are turning in, it kind of looks like a Frankenstein movie or something.
SG:Oh, very much -- and yet the kid doesn't die.
RB:No, no. He's trying to get his human body back, but he kind of likes being Decapitator after awhile.
SG:Well I'm sure. It's got to be somewhat fun having certain appendages that you normally don't.
RB:Well yeah, we won't go there, but he definitely is having some fun with it (laughs).
SG:Yeah. Now, with the exception of this comic, like you said earlier, you're really best known as being a sculptor, particularly of comics-related images. Let's talk about your past (doing that) for awhile. How did you get started as a sculptor?
RB:Let's see -- profesionally I started out doing garage kits, which are model kits that guys make in their garage. It's usually one guy sculpting, casting, molding, selling, usually unlicensed characters -- just a home-based business. And then, I think it was in 1991, Mike Richardson saw one of my sculptures in a comic shop in Las Vegas, and I started working for Dark Horse, and at about the same time I started doing things for DC also.
SG:And how did that translate from your earliest beginnings? Were you a comics fan as a kid?
RB:Oh yeah, I was a comics fan, but I was really too poor to buy any comics as a kid.
And it's kind of funny because I used to sacrifice everything to get a comic and now I have hundreds of free comics coming to me every week or so.
SG:The irony of it. So is that what you saw yourself doing then when you were younger?
RB:Yeah, I used to want to be a comic book artist, and I draw, but not nearly as well as, you know, Mignola or Kelley Jones or Doug Mahnke or some of those guys.
SG:And somebody has to make the models.
RB:Exactly.