John Arcudi is a seriously talented dude. Not only is he one of he most prolific writers working in the industry today, he's also one of the best. Seriously, the man knows his stuff. Here's John now with a quick word on his newest collaboration with Mike Mignola, Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever.
My brain, it doesn’t work the way Mike Mignola’s does. Be nice if it did, but it doesn’t. He wakes up in the morning and gets a glimmer of an idea and by the time he’s out of the shower, he’s got a whole miniseries in his head. Not me. I get a hint of an idea and then it starts running around in my brain desperately looking for other ideas (or even just other hints) to keep it company. Eventually, I get a small crowd and then I can get to work at telling an actual story, but it can take weeks—months sometimes. So you can see why it would be really easy for me to hate a guy like Mike. The only reason I don’t, I guess, is because for some insane reason, Mike puts up with my glacial process. He’s willing to wait, and he’s come to trust that it’ll be worth the wait. Truth is, it’s not quite so grim as I make it sound because this modus operandi of mine is going on with several different stories simultaneously, each staking out its own corral of ideas in my brain, and each popping out and ready to write at staggered intervals so that we can still manage to get a regular B.P.R.D. book out on a timely basis. But then you have something like Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever, a book that literally took years to come together.
Long ago, over lunch, Mike and I were talking about all the (probably never-to-be- realized) possibilities of the B.P.R.D. universe, and I told Mike I wanted to do a series about the theft of Apache chief Mangas Coloradas’s bizarrely preserved brain from the Smithsonian Institute because I love the West, and I love Native American mythology—and who doesn’t like a good stolen-brain story? Realizing it wouldn’t quite fit into our plan, the notion of doing such a tale sort of stuck back there in my head. Now if we could just get this notion some friends, right? Months later, Mike told me about this one character, a “villain” from a 1930s pulp-style oeuvre, who had a strange sidekick. I won’t tell you more than that. They’re Mike’s characters, after all, but we had a good laugh over them…and then the dynamic of the oddball duo ended up getting stuck back there in my brain, also lonely. Okay, now it’s years later, and with B.P.R.D. being the success that it is, Mike asked me if there was anything else I wanted to write. “A western,” was my immediate answer. Mike cocked an eyebrow and said, “What, that Indian-brain thing?” and I responded, “No. A good old nineteenth-century western.” Ha ha ha. Right. A B.P.R.D.-universe western. Oh, well, whatever. He asked, right?
But when Mike decided he wanted to do an Edward Grey series (set in the late nineteenth century), he called me up. “Hey, still wanna do that western?” Sure, that’s it. I would just use Grey. Great. But what’s the story? Oh, wait, the weird duo…yeah, those guys…ummmm, well, what else? Uh-huh, that’s right. Nothin’ else. But I had a start, or a second start…or a fourth start if you’re really keeping count, but a definite start, and the other pieces slowly drifted toward one another…slowly.
Flash-forward a few months, and Scott Allie, who had worked with the legendary John Severin on a Conan story (and with both of us on a War on Frogs one-shot) was talking to big John, trying to see if he wanted to do anything else at Dark Horse—“You know, like a western.” And remarkably, this icon of western comics, this titan of the EC era, this consummate artist’s artist, said, “Sure.” John Severin said, “Sure,” to working with me on a five-issue western series! Holy $#&! That’ll speed up anybody’s process—you know, unless you’re a complete loser, and thankfully I’m not quite there yet. So it all came together right then because it had to. Those pieces I talked about, and others, fell into place, along with a lot of other stuff that I wish I could talk more about; however, it appears I’ve run outta room.
Dreadful sorry.
j-
My brain, it doesn’t work the way Mike Mignola’s does. Be nice if it did, but it doesn’t. He wakes up in the morning and gets a glimmer of an idea and by the time he’s out of the shower, he’s got a whole miniseries in his head. Not me. I get a hint of an idea and then it starts running around in my brain desperately looking for other ideas (or even just other hints) to keep it company. Eventually, I get a small crowd and then I can get to work at telling an actual story, but it can take weeks—months sometimes. So you can see why it would be really easy for me to hate a guy like Mike. The only reason I don’t, I guess, is because for some insane reason, Mike puts up with my glacial process. He’s willing to wait, and he’s come to trust that it’ll be worth the wait. Truth is, it’s not quite so grim as I make it sound because this modus operandi of mine is going on with several different stories simultaneously, each staking out its own corral of ideas in my brain, and each popping out and ready to write at staggered intervals so that we can still manage to get a regular B.P.R.D. book out on a timely basis. But then you have something like Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever, a book that literally took years to come together.Long ago, over lunch, Mike and I were talking about all the (probably never-to-be- realized) possibilities of the B.P.R.D. universe, and I told Mike I wanted to do a series about the theft of Apache chief Mangas Coloradas’s bizarrely preserved brain from the Smithsonian Institute because I love the West, and I love Native American mythology—and who doesn’t like a good stolen-brain story? Realizing it wouldn’t quite fit into our plan, the notion of doing such a tale sort of stuck back there in my head. Now if we could just get this notion some friends, right? Months later, Mike told me about this one character, a “villain” from a 1930s pulp-style oeuvre, who had a strange sidekick. I won’t tell you more than that. They’re Mike’s characters, after all, but we had a good laugh over them…and then the dynamic of the oddball duo ended up getting stuck back there in my brain, also lonely. Okay, now it’s years later, and with B.P.R.D. being the success that it is, Mike asked me if there was anything else I wanted to write. “A western,” was my immediate answer. Mike cocked an eyebrow and said, “What, that Indian-brain thing?” and I responded, “No. A good old nineteenth-century western.” Ha ha ha. Right. A B.P.R.D.-universe western. Oh, well, whatever. He asked, right?
But when Mike decided he wanted to do an Edward Grey series (set in the late nineteenth century), he called me up. “Hey, still wanna do that western?” Sure, that’s it. I would just use Grey. Great. But what’s the story? Oh, wait, the weird duo…yeah, those guys…ummmm, well, what else? Uh-huh, that’s right. Nothin’ else. But I had a start, or a second start…or a fourth start if you’re really keeping count, but a definite start, and the other pieces slowly drifted toward one another…slowly.
Flash-forward a few months, and Scott Allie, who had worked with the legendary John Severin on a Conan story (and with both of us on a War on Frogs one-shot) was talking to big John, trying to see if he wanted to do anything else at Dark Horse—“You know, like a western.” And remarkably, this icon of western comics, this titan of the EC era, this consummate artist’s artist, said, “Sure.” John Severin said, “Sure,” to working with me on a five-issue western series! Holy $#&! That’ll speed up anybody’s process—you know, unless you’re a complete loser, and thankfully I’m not quite there yet. So it all came together right then because it had to. Those pieces I talked about, and others, fell into place, along with a lot of other stuff that I wish I could talk more about; however, it appears I’ve run outta room.
Dreadful sorry.
j-
Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #1 is in stores now!