Robot 6 Loves MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues!

Robot 6, one of the blogs over at Comic Book Resources, has a regular feature by Tim O'Shea called Talking Comics with Tim. In the latest installment, Tim talks to Glenn Eichler and myself about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues. More interview than review, it's an interesting piece and I encourage you all to go read me wax rhapsodic or rap idiotic depending on your point of view. Here's a little taste…

O’Shea: Question for the both of you, there appear to be metaphorical fences in this book (between people and between the dogs), in addition to the physical fences. Would you agree?

Infurnari: When I read the script, I was reminded of how in art and literature natural landscapes have often represented the depths of the human psyche. There’s something about the dark bottomless fathoms of the oceans, the mysteries of the forest or the wide open expanses of sand or snow that spark our imaginations. In Mush!, the barren isolation of the Alaskan landscape sets the scene for a story about the dogs’ psychological state and ultimately our own interior lives as readers. The fences in this story are boundaries preventing the dogs from being out in the open on a run where they are most happy. The trail is their bliss and the fences that keep them from it mark the breeding area of their issues.

Eichler: Well, definitely. No one can ever know or meld with another person (or dog) entirely, and the isolation in which they all live just throws those differences into brighter relief. But that same isolation also creates fences that enclose the people and the dogs, forcing them together because they really can’t get away from each other. I’m saying the book has a lot of fences. It’s best to read it with a pair of wire cutters.

O’Shea: Glenn, not to get bogged down in details, but naming one’s dog is often a challenge. You really did a good job of naming the team of dogs in this story, did that come to you quite easily as you developed the characters or was it challenging with certain characters?

Eichler: I hate naming characters as a general rule, but I tried for a mix of the silliness and anthropomorphism often found in the names that real people give their real dogs. I also wanted to touch on the way people will give their puppies names that turn out to be either perfectly descriptive of their adult personalities, or utterly wrong.

O’Shea: Glenn (from the book’s acknowledgements you thank the dogs “who talk to him when he sleeps”) how long have you heard the dogs talking to you?

Eichler: I didn’t write that. The dog dictated it.

To read interview in its entirety, click here.

New Interview in the latest Trip City Podcast!

No, that's not me up there. I'm much more handsome than that! All kidding aside, head on over to Trip City, where I have an interview with Jeffrey Burandt and Dean Haspiel in Trip City's latest podcast. You'll be amazed at the things I say with a foot in my mouth!

Thanks to Dean Haspiel, Jeffrey Burandt and Chris Miskiewicz for making this happen.

MUSH! is HUGE in Singapore!

You'll have to forgive my overly histrionic title but when Nicholas Yong, journalist for the Singapore Straits Times writes such a lovely review for MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues, I can't help but get a little excited. The book is available there through Books Kinokuniya. Here's the review in full:

Guy is going after team leader Dolly’s job. Buddy is lusting after Venus, who is not interested. And all Winston wants is a bit of respect, while nobody knows what Fiddler wants.

The dog-eat-dog world comes to life in this wry, offbeat tale of six sled dogs and their two owners in the remote Alaskan frost.

All six pooches have clearly defined personalities and all just want the boss to hitch them to his sled and take them on a run. As Fiddler, a mixed-breed Alaskan Husky, gloomily puts it: “Not much point being alive if we don’t run.” Much of the fun of the story lies in watching the dogs interact between the longed-for runs: These mutts are as flawed as their owners, plagued by ambition, self-doubt and self-absorption.

The outspoken, caustic Dolly, a gorgeous Seppal Siberian sled dog, gets the best lines. In response to Fiddler’s remark about a sled dog who does not run, she says: “The meaning of that dog’s life is, he should be a cat.”

There are also plenty of laughs at the expense of the hapless Buddy, a Greenland dog, whose lust for Dolly is the very definition of, erm, puppy love. He is too dense to tell that she is indifferent to him, although the owners have mated the two several times.

Infurnari’s frenetic, almost cartoonish visuals complement Eichler’s acerbic wit perfectly and make the dogs particularly expressive. The human characters almost pale in comparison.

Dog owners Frank and Patty have their own issues. Frank is determined to disavow human society, declaring that “my dogs care about me more than they do”. Exasperated, Patty has the perfect comeback: “How loving do you think your precious dogs would be if you didn’t control their food?”

There is a strange irony in seeing humans, who consider themselves highly evolved, and dogs, supposedly their best friends, bickering over the same things. Frank might as well be talking about people when he says of the dogs: “They’re never more than one bite away from backsliding into wildness.”

At the end of this charming, enjoyable tale, Frank and Patty face the same issue as the dogs: They just have to learn to get along and work together if they want to survive.

Thanks go to Nicholas Yong for contacting me and bringing this to my attention.

MARATHON: The Making of a Cover

Marathon tells the epic tale of the original long distance runner. In 490 BC, an Athenian messenger named Eucles ran twenty-seven miles from Sparta to Athens, and in so doing preserved ancient Greek civilization from subjugation to the Persian Empire.

That's a very broad overview of the book but it's representative of the first step for creating any cover. Know your book! When I sat down to do the cover, I understood that our protagonist needed to be featured prominently in a direct and compelling way that also illustrated the books high intensity and relentless, grueling action. The thumbnails (images 1-6 below) reflect the various solutions I came up with to try and deliver that message.

With thumbnails, you can nail it within your first few drawings but often times innovation comes from going beyond those immediate solutions and challenging your creativity. My initial tactic was to use some of the dramatic moments leading up to the war at Marathon where Eucles both physically and spiritually leads the Athenian army into battle. Writer Boaz Yakin was correct in pointing out that this only represented a small part of the story and asked to see some cover treatments where Eucles was not in armor. The third page of thumbnails and beyond reflect this change. I then tried showing Eucles dressed in just a loin cloth either running towards the vast Persian army or racing it's fleet back to Athens (image 4). The pitfall with the latter idea was it could be misconstrued that the lone runner was running away from the Persian army. That wouldn't be heroic and it wouldn't be appropriate to the story. The last act of Marathon is spent following Eucles and a band of soldiers as they struggle to outrace a secondary invading fleet heading directly to Athens' shores. My solution to this was to eliminate the Persian force and return to just Eucles and the Greek army. After a few variations with this, the team at First Second and Boaz all agreed that the best solution was the first thumbnail in image 6.

The next step is to pencil a full size version of the cover (image 7). Once I had approval on this, I was cleared to go ahead with the inks (image 8). Inking Marathon was done using a high contrast print of the pencils as my starting point. I then added ink washes and line work to finish the image (image 9). When I colored the cover, I tinted the inks with the same pantone as was used in the interior pages to ensure a consistent look between the full color cover and the monochromatic interior pages. After a few failed attempts (not shown), I settled on two color treatments; one with a full color background (image 9) and the other with an intense red background (image 10). At this stage there was no consensus on which. Colleen AF Venable, First Second's designer, created two versions (images 11 and 12). I had an idea for what I would like to see for the logo for the red cover and Colleen intuited that perfectly! That is why I think the red cover with white logo was met with such unanimous praise and agreement.

The final cover (top) shows Colleen's brilliant final type treatment for the logo. The whole thing comes together wonderfully and delivers the key epic story elements and emotional intensity that is the heart of Marathon.

Marathon by Boaz Yakin and Joe Infurnari hits bookstores and comic shops early June 2012.

This post was originally presented at Trip City.

The Onion AV Club gets MUSHY for MUSH!

Okay, I've been meaning to use that subject line for a while now and I just couldn't hold it any longer!! The Onion's AV Club takes a look at December graphic novel releases and had this to say about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues:

It’s clear that writer Glenn Eichler and artist Joe Infurnari did their research before embarking on the graphic novel Mush! Sled Dogs With Issues (First Second). The book is full of information about how dog teams work together, both in cooperation and in competition. Eichler (creator of the MTV animated series Daria and current writer for The Colbert Report) extrapolates from animal psychology, creating characters with their own neuroses. Some of the dogs are jealous, some self-deprecating, some lustful. Then Eichler and Infurnari contrast the relationships of the pooches with that of their masters: a married couple who’ve begun to have some bitter disagreements about their decision to live out in the wild, far from society. Mush! feels like it ends too soon, but that’s mainly because the dogs and the humans alike are so well-defined that they could easily support a book twice as long. …

Thanks AV Club! You'll just have to wait until the sequel, SLUSH! Sled Dogs 2; Crazy in the Heat! where our favorite dysfunctional team of dogs find themselves recalled by the CIA for a covert mission in Hawaii with global repercussions! It's going to be a wonderful shark-jumping good time (yes, they will actually jump many sharks)!

MARATHON off to the printer…

Here's a sliver of a sneak peek at MARATHON's cover. I'll have the whole thing up in the new year. In the meantime, happy holidays y'all!

Comics Alliance Features MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues!

Laura Hudson over at Comics Alliance has been generous enough to give MUSH! the deluxe treatment! In her preview (available here), you'll find 27 pages from the book–that's many more pages than are available anywhere else! You can only see them there! WHY AREN'T YOU AS EXCITED AS ME!! Thanks so much, Laura, and thank you Comics Alliance!

Stephen Colbert Loves MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues!

On last night's Colbert Report, Stephen had a brief segment about MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues! This is one of the coolest things EVER! He actually pronounced my name correctly, too! Here's a link to the full episode. Mush is featured at around 20:00. Enjoy!

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-december-6-2011-the-black-keys

Thanks, Stephen!