Interview with Tiger Lung Writer Simon Roy

Simon Roy – Tiger Lung interview – questions by Simon’s editor Philip Simon:

Canadian writer/artist Simon Roy’s Tiger Lung hardcover will be released on Wednesday, December 3. The short stories in this collection follow the strange life of the daring Tiger Lung, a shaman-warrior/shaman-detective who strives to keep the people of several scattered tribes in Paleolithic Europe alive in a vast and hostile world. Simon Roy’s Dark Horse editor, Philip Simon, asked him some questions recently about Tiger Lung and Roy’s fascination with Paleolithic-era adventures.

Philip Simon: How did the world of Tiger Lung first form in your brain? Did you “bump into” the character of Tiger Lung while you were perhaps sketching and playing around with characters to work with? Or did the harsh environment of Paleolithic Europe and seeing humans in that setting speak to you first? Or was it something else?

Simon Roy: Five or six years ago, I think I first started to wonder, “What would a grounded fantasy-adventure story set in the Ice Age look like?” Paleolithic Europe comes with a full bestiary of iconic and terrifying critters, plus both Neanderthals and modern humans (for a time). It seems like a vastly underused space to make stories in. But some of the catalyst came from reading some of the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser (one of my father’s all-time favorite series), which all star a cowardly British cavalryman who manages to lie, flee, and bang his way across the more notable historical and military events of the period. Why not use a shaman to try to do the same across the wilds of Ice Age Europe? Tell an adventure and try to make the deep past feel relatable and real. 

PS: Your enthusiasm for the Paleolithic era comes across in the frequent sketches and artwork that you share online—whether on your blog or on Facebook or whatnot (New fans! Look for Simon Roy online on Facebook and at Robot-Blood.Blogspot.com, Simon-Roy.Tumblr.com, and Povorot.DeviantArt.com)—and I’m wondering if your interest in the Paleolithic time and early human civilizations is something that’s burned for a while, long before you first started working on Tiger Lung short stories, or if working on Tiger Lung tales got you more hooked on researching and reading about early human history?

SR: I’ve always had an interest in paleontology and archaeology, but that’s mainly because I’ve never gotten over the childish wonder of knowing that all these strange humans and animals really lived! As someone who grew up in late Holocene North America, the idea of a time when humans were just another part of the ecology has that perfect balance between alien and familiar to make it really compelling. Aside from a few places in Africa and the wildernesses of North America, mankind has been the top dog ecologically for a long, long time. So imagining a world where people with brains and internal lives just like our own were living alongside crazy megafauna (not to mention other human races!) felt like the kind of viewpoint that would be worth exploring. 

PS: The mystical creatures in Tiger Lung’s real world and in the spirit world (aside from the crow that appears to help out your frazzled shaman) seem either irked by humanity or actively against humanity. Do you see humanity as something that encroaches upon a magical or semi-magical existence with its ignorance—or do you feel that humanity can coexist with the spiritual realm?

SR: Well, I’m mostly a scientific materialist, so it’s less about ideas of man encroaching on the spiritual world and more about the kind of spiritual world that the scared, lonely humans of the Ice Age would construct. The indifference and hostility you’re identifying reflects how the world might have looked to these hunter-gatherers: vast, uncaring, hostile, and mysterious. You can get a glimpse of that by looking into the mythology of some modern-day Arctic peoples, like the Inuit. Much of their mythology has the hallmarks of humans trying to make sense of a terrifying world that’s doing its best to kill them.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, shamanism fascinates me for its personal aspects. Our current religions grew within the confines of agricultural-industrial civilization, where they played a key part in maintaining the social structures that allow some semblance of order in large, settled populations. In these religions, the relationship between the individual and the divine is usually regulated and defined through a hierarchical bureaucracy of spiritual elites, who keep an eye on enforcing orthodoxy and maintaining social stability. But the shaman’s relationship with the spiritual world is a much more intimate thing. Going on a shamanic trip often involves some serious direct neural intervention (via psychedelic drugs, fasting, hyperventilation, rhythmic drumming, etc.) to push the shaman’s brain into an altered state. Since modern humans are all basically running off of the same hardware, the stages of altered consciousness (and the sense-impressions of these trips) are universal across the world—but how the brain makes sense of them is entirely dependent on the culture the traveler comes from. The shaman’s power, then, in his community comes from two sources: his personal, subjective experiences with the “spiritual world” and his ability to communicate and convince said community of these experiences. The space between those two, in particular, is something I’d like to spend more time exploring in Tiger Lung. 

PS: While we were putting this hardcover together, Simon, we noticed that there’s something of a rolling theme of “distance between parents and children” at work in your short stories in this collection. Was that calculated? Is there something about this roaming shaman, Tiger Lung, that pulls him toward families or communities in crisis?

SR: Eventually I want to show the circumstances that turned Tiger Lung into a roaming shaman and forced him to leave his village—some kind of horrible supernatural circumstance that he’s responsible for in some aspect. So he’s a character that would like to belong, yet he feels compelled to do so through the intimacy and distance of the shamanic role. But in terms of straight storytelling, talking about tension and distance between parents and children is something that feels universally resonant. 

PS: Your Tiger Lung stories jump in time throughout your shaman’s life. Do you see any “connective tissue” developing to link the stories up—or have you built any connecting threads into these stories?

SR: That, specifically, is something I want to leave open. I have ideas on how to connect these disparate stories, but I plan on leaving myself room to do whatever I want with the world and the character, and not tie them down too much to a specific continuity. Or rather, to make a continuity that’s additive, and not restrictive. 

PS: How did you first come to collaborate with Jason Wordie? Do you enjoy your collaborative projects (Prophet, The Field, two Tiger Lung stories) as much as your solo pieces (Jan’s Atomic Heart, “The Hyena’s Daughter” in the Tiger Lung collection)? Does being part of a team jazz you up as much as working solo?

SR: Jason and I went to school together at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, where we met in a first-year drawing class and ended up taking the same specialization (character design). We were always talking story stuff the whole time we were in school, so for one of the more open-ended projects of our final semester, we decided to collaborate on something a bit more ambitious, storytelling-wise. This was after I had finished the first complete Tiger Lung story (collected as “Song for the Dead”), so we had an established tone to work off of. It was really awesome to work together. Jason’s got a very sharp, cinematic mind for story, so we ended up going in some great directions, both visually and narratively, that neither of us would have thought of on our own. Working as part of a collaborative team is awesome, especially when you know your partner well and can comfortably build off of each other. But of course, in some ways, working alone is easier, since you’ve only got yourself to quarrel with! Either way, my main motivation for creating things is to make stuff that I want to read. As long as I’m still interested in it once it’s over, it doesn't necessarily matter how many people worked on it. 

PS: You’re going to have a Tiger Lung story in Dark Horse Presents Volume 3 #6 (on sale January 21!). Can you tell us something about that? Will it tie in with any of the lore or characters seen in the stories that will be running in the Tiger Lung hardcover?

SR: The upcoming short is an exploration of Tiger Lung’s first encounter with his spirit guide. While hunting as a teenager, Tiger Lung is gravely wounded by an animal and finds himself stranded in the land of the dead—until he meets a particular spirit. It’s a very exposition-light story, but it will take the viewer to places that they’ll have seen before (if they’ve read the collection). 

PS: What comics were you most enthusiastic about when you were growing up, just starting to read? Can you remember the first comic that made a big impression on you? The first writer or artist or writer/artist you really took notice of?

SR: Since childhood, I’ve always been a huge fan of Bill Watterson, Hergé, and Goscinny (the Asterix artist). But the first artist that inspired me to explore comics seriously as an adult was Gipi. His Notes for a War Story is a really smart, character-driven book, but it’s drawn in a very naturalistic, loose style that I had never seen in North American comics. If not for Gipi showing me that one can relax and just draw comics, I might not be doing this stuff today.

Philip Simon: How did the world of Tiger Lung first form in your brain? Did you “bump into” the character of Tiger Lung while you were perhaps sketching and playing around with characters to work with? Or did the harsh environment of Paleolithic Europe and seeing humans in that setting speak to you first? Or was it something else?

Simon Roy: Five or six years ago, I think I first started to wonder, “What would a grounded fantasy-adventure story set in the Ice Age look like?” Paleolithic Europe comes with a full bestiary of iconic and terrifying critters, plus both Neanderthals and modern humans (for a time). It seems like a vastly underused space to make stories in. But some of the catalyst came from reading some of the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser (one of my father’s all-time favorite series), which all star a cowardly British cavalryman who manages to lie, flee, and bang his way across the more notable historical and military events of the period. Why not use a shaman to try to do the same across the wilds of Ice Age Europe? Tell an adventure and try to make the deep past feel relatable and real.

PS: Your enthusiasm for the Paleolithic era comes across in the frequent sketches and artwork that you share online—whether on your blog or on Facebook or whatnot (New fans! Look for Simon Roy online on Facebook and at Robot-Blood.Blogspot.com, Simon-Roy.Tumblr.com, and Povorot.DeviantArt.com)—and I’m wondering if your interest in the Paleolithic time and early human civilizations is something that’s burned for a while, long before you first started working on Tiger Lung short stories, or if working on Tiger Lung tales got you more hooked on researching and reading about early human history?

SR: I’ve always had an interest in paleontology and archaeology, but that’s mainly because I’ve never gotten over the childish wonder of knowing that all these strange humans and animals really lived! As someone who grew up in late Holocene North America, the idea of a time when humans were just another part of the ecology has that perfect balance between alien and familiar to make it really compelling. Aside from a few places in Africa and the wildernesses of North America, mankind has been the top dog ecologically for a long, long time. So imagining a world where people with brains and internal lives just like our own were living alongside crazy megafauna (not to mention other human races!) felt like the kind of viewpoint that would be worth exploring.

 
PS: The mystical creatures in Tiger Lung’s real world and in the spirit world (aside from the crow that appears to help out your frazzled shaman) seem either irked by humanity or actively against humanity. Do you see humanity as something that encroaches upon a magical or semi-magical existence with its ignorance—or do you feel that humanity can coexist with the spiritual realm?

SR: Well, I’m mostly a scientific materialist, so it’s less about ideas of man encroaching on the spiritual world and more about the kind of spiritual world that the scared, lonely humans of the Ice Age would construct. The indifference and hostility you’re identifying reflects how the world might have looked to these hunter-gatherers: vast, uncaring, hostile, and mysterious. You can get a glimpse of that by looking into the mythology of some modern-day Arctic peoples, like the Inuit. Much of their mythology has the hallmarks of humans trying to make sense of a terrifying world that’s doing its best to kill them.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, shamanism fascinates me for its personal aspects. Our current religions grew within the confines of agricultural-industrial civilization, where they played a key part in maintaining the social structures that allow some semblance of order in large, settled populations. In these religions, the relationship between the individual and the divine is usually regulated and defined through a hierarchical bureaucracy of spiritual elites, who keep an eye on enforcing orthodoxy and maintaining social stability. But the shaman’s relationship with the spiritual world is a much more intimate thing. Going on a shamanic trip often involves some serious direct neural intervention (via psychedelic drugs, fasting, hyperventilation, rhythmic drumming, etc.) to push the shaman’s brain into an altered state. Since modern humans are all basically running off of the same hardware, the stages of altered consciousness (and the sense-impressions of these trips) are universal across the world—but how the brain makes sense of them is entirely dependent on the culture the traveler comes from. The shaman’s power, then, in his community comes from two sources: his personal, subjective experiences with the “spiritual world” and his ability to communicate and convince said community of these experiences. The space between those two, in particular, is something I’d like to spend more time exploring in Tiger Lung.

 
PS: While we were putting this hardcover together, Simon, we noticed that there’s something of a rolling theme of “distance between parents and children” at work in your short stories in this collection. Was that calculated? Is there something about this roaming shaman, Tiger Lung, that pulls him toward families or communities in crisis?

SR: Eventually I want to show the circumstances that turned Tiger Lung into a roaming shaman and forced him to leave his village—some kind of horrible supernatural circumstance that he’s responsible for in some aspect. So he’s a character that would like to belong, yet he feels compelled to do so through the intimacy and distance of the shamanic role. But in terms of straight storytelling, talking about tension and distance between parents and children is something that feels universally resonant.

 
PS: Your Tiger Lung stories jump in time throughout your shaman’s life. Do you see any “connective tissue” developing to link the stories up—or have you built any connecting threads into these stories?

SR: That, specifically, is something I want to leave open. I have ideas on how to connect these disparate stories, but I plan on leaving myself room to do whatever I want with the world and the character, and not tie them down too much to a specific continuity. Or rather, to make a continuity that’s additive, and not restrictive.

 
PS: How did you first come to collaborate with Jason Wordie? Do you enjoy your collaborative projects (Prophet, The Field, two Tiger Lung stories) as much as your solo pieces (Jan’s Atomic Heart, “The Hyena’s Daughter” in the Tiger Lung collection)? Does being part of a team jazz you up as much as working solo?

SR: Jason and I went to school together at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, where we met in a first-year drawing class and ended up taking the same specialization (character design). We were always talking story stuff the whole time we were in school, so for one of the more open-ended projects of our final semester, we decided to collaborate on something a bit more ambitious, storytelling-wise. This was after I had finished the first complete Tiger Lung story (collected as “Song for the Dead”), so we had an established tone to work off of. It was really awesome to work together. Jason’s got a very sharp, cinematic mind for story, so we ended up going in some great directions, both visually and narratively, that neither of us would have thought of on our own. Working as part of a collaborative team is awesome, especially when you know your partner well and can comfortably build off of each other. But of course, in some ways, working alone is easier, since you’ve only got yourself to quarrel with! Either way, my main motivation for creating things is to make stuff that I want to read. As long as I’m still interested in it once it’s over, it doesn't necessarily matter how many people worked on it.

 
PS: You’re going to have a Tiger Lung story in Dark Horse Presents Volume 3 #6 (on sale January 21!). Can you tell us something about that? Will it tie in with any of the lore or characters seen in the stories that will be running in the Tiger Lung hardcover?

SR: The upcoming short is an exploration of Tiger Lung’s first encounter with his spirit guide. While hunting as a teenager, Tiger Lung is gravely wounded by an animal and finds himself stranded in the land of the dead—until he meets a particular spirit. It’s a very exposition-light story, but it will take the viewer to places that they’ll have seen before (if they’ve read the collection).

 
PS: What comics were you most enthusiastic about when you were growing up, just starting to read? Can you remember the first comic that made a big impression on you? The first writer or artist or writer/artist you really took notice of?

SR: Since childhood, I’ve always been a huge fan of Bill Watterson, Hergé, and Goscinny (the Asterix artist). But the first artist that inspired me to explore comics seriously as an adult was Gipi. His Notes for a War Story is a really smart, character-driven book, but it’s drawn in a very naturalistic, loose style that I had never seen in North American comics. If not for Gipi showing me that one can relax and just draw comics, I might not be doing this stuff today.