At the beginning of May, just in time for Free Comic Book Day, a new series called Hope, dropped from Source Point Press.
It was a comic with a cute and colorful cover, and an extra cute 3 Rivers Comicon exclusive variant. At first glance, it looks like such a nice, feel good comic about a superhero mom and her daughter. But as cliché as it is, you should never judge a book by it’s cover. Instead of a happy family story, Hope stood out as a very intense, very real feeling superhero story. A “what would happen if…” that really hits home and honestly blew me away. So, of course, I had to talk with series creators Dirk Manning and K. Lynn Smith more about the story, where it came from, and what to expect in the future.
To start off the interview, can you tell us what is the book about?
Dirk Manning: Hope is about a mom who moonlights as a superhero. Within the first five pages of the first issue something very traumatic and dramatic happens that really changes the trajectory of her life forever.
The plot theme is much bigger in it’s a lot of how women are viewed in society – specifically mothers. And we really look at a lot of that through the lens of superheroes.
I read your excerpt on the back, Dirk, when you were talking about finding K. Lynn Smith here and so, K. Lynn, what were your first impressions of this story? What drew you to it?
K. Lynn Smith: First and foremost it’s a human story. I’ve always wanted to dabble into the superhero genre because, of course, it’s comic book world. But having the human story first and foremost was what drew me to it. And it’s Dirk Manning, he’s usually a horror writer, so what the heck is he doing in this playground? It was purely curiosity, I just wanted to know where this was going. He pitched me the idea. He sent me the first scripts. We talked on the phone about the initial ideas of where we wanted to take the story. I suggested one conclusion and he said, “Let’s do it!” So that was that. That’s history right there.
You touched on what I was going to ask next which is, Dirk, you’re normally a horror writer. So where did this idea come from and what inspired you to go with this direction this kind of story?
DM: During a recent drive to a convention K. Lynn and I had this conversation about the perception of horror.
The perception of horror oftentimes, to be very blunt, is blood and boobs. That’s not my jam. It’s just not. I know I’m saying this to two ladies and I don’t mean to be crass, but I think my whole career a lot has been trying to demonstrate getting horror out of the ghetto or helping to grow that perception of what horror can be.
I think nowadays we’re living in a golden age of horror where so many things that are horror, people don’t want to call it horror because it’s good. It’s winning awards. I’m a huge horror guy and I love horror. And to me horror boils down to one question – “What would you do if…” To me, that’s the basis of any horror story.
I tell people all the time that Hope is certainly not a horror book. It’s not in any conceivable level, but at the same time it’s the scariest book I’ve ever written.
I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things and I’ve had a lot of very wonderful mothers in my life and I really want to explore the idea of how we have a very different expectation of women, especially mothers, in society. I think exploring that through a lens of that superhero lens was a good parable to explore this. I realize that, full disclosure, I am a middle-aged white guy talking about women’s issues. But you know, none of us on the creative team are mothers and have faced that situation our lives. It’s been a weird thing for me to embrace the fact now that the book is real, I’ve had this idea since 2007. And again, it’s scary.
And for you K. Lynn, with this kind of genre, this story – I want to try to keep it as spoiler free as I can because I want people to read the book obviously – but was this story different than your experience doing Plume which seems a bit lighter? And you did Plume on your own, the writing and art – what was it like doing a co-creation?
KLS: Plume starts out that way, but it gets pretty dark. Actually, it’s interesting because Dirk and I always joke about who’s the darkest one out of this pair because he had given me the script for a certain issue and he had an ending to it where it was not as dark as it could go, and I told him, “make it darker.”
DM: And I thought I was being a jerk by making it dark and here she was saying “make it darker,” and I’m the horror guy.
KLS: As far as story wise goes, I don’t think Plume is any darker. I think what makes Hope a little darker is that it’s set in reality. With Plume it’s a little more whimsical and it’s a Western in times past plus there’s magic involved.
So with Hope it’s reality. There’s one shot where she’s in this tragic moment and people are just filming her on their phone they’re not calling for help. And that’s what makes it so scary is because it’s just the public reaction. Or how you have one bad thing and the public becomes just a roar of rebellion and you are the target. As far as working script wise, with Plume I’m the writer and the artist, so it was so loosey-goosey with the script and with Dirk and collaborating, it’s his vision initially so he hands me a script and I want to fulfill that. I want to do right by him but he’s also extremely open to edits which is something I really appreciate about him. It’s a co-created series so he respects me as a writer as well.
DM: We even do the beast of the whole script together. As K. Lynn mentioned, Hope was my initial concept, but I came to K. Lynn as an illustrator and as a writer. I’ve read Plume, I love Plume, and I recognized her work and stuff like that. I knew that I did not want K. Lynn Smith to be just my drawing hand. I wanted a woman’s perspective on this book too. K. Lynn is genuinely a collaborator on the book, Heather Antos is our editor and they are two very strong creative women. There’s been times when I’ve written something, and they’ll tell me “I really wouldn’t say it that way” and I say, “Okay cool!” Because I need that. I appreciate that perspective.
But what we do creatively is, we talked about the beats to the whole storyline and she made some suggestions like, “Oh and what if X” and I was like, “Oh my God” and the sky parted, and the sun shone down like, oh she’s the one! So from there we did a beat sheet, we worked it all out, then I read every script, and then I give it to her and we hash it out together, and from there we give it to Heather. We’re two very strong, independent creators and we knew bringing her in that it was going to be her job to wrangle us. As a result, it’s been this very cool, collaborative process with which we can work together to get the best version of the book possible.
Again, Dirk, since you normally a horror writer, what drew you to the superhero aspect? Why superheroes?
DM: You know it’s a good question because I didn’t even grow up really reading superheroes.
I did a book called Write or Wrong: A Writer’s Guide to Creating Comics and I talked a lot about if you’re going to come out of the gate with a superhero book you better come out hot. You better have done something that no one’s ever done before and I wish I thought about this before Free Comic Book Day because Free Comic Book Day was the official release of Hope #1 from Source Point Press. And I wish I’d thought about the fact that there has never been another superhero comic book about a mother. People say, “Well Fantastic Four.” No, that was a team book, and Sue Storm has never gotten a mini-series, let alone a one-shot. So again, I think the framework of the story that we’re telling – this was the right vehicle for it. Ultimately this is a book about how women are viewed in society, viewed in public – privacy is addressed very much in the story – and expectation. And I’ll tell you right, this story would not exist if Hope was a guy. This story wouldn’t work. But it works with a woman who is exceptional and the expectations and the things that happen as a result of that.
What about you, K. Lynn? You mentioned too that you were interested in Hope being a superhero, is that something that you’d been interested in previously or were you just drawn to this story?
KLS: I didn’t grow up with superheroes either. It was an industry geared more of men and so I was on the outside. But again, it was the human story of it. I didn’t think I’d ever dabble into the world of capes. I just didn’t think it was my wheelhouse. Dirk Manning’s first issue really intrigued me because it was about this woman who has all this power and she could change her fate but society’s like, “nope.” It just takes her down to her core. That’s what interested me in it. There’s a bigger message there.
One of the things that I really liked about the comic, and what I like about your writing and art together, is there are times where it’s dark, but the illustration is so colorful and pretty. What are both of your thoughts on how those go together?
KLS: It lowers your guard and I think, like you said, that cover with the mom and the daughter, it seems like it’s going be a really happy story and you open up you’re like, “You! Dirk Manning!” Shaking your fists. It’s kind of unexpected.
Dirk, you mentioned that you had that Aha! – moment of like this art, so is that what you were going for?
DM: I was aware of K. Lynn’s work through Plume and things like that, so I knew the darkness was there. This is a book that needs a certain aesthetic. And I never want to be the guy to say, “Well, a woman has to draw it,” that was never my intent. It needed to be the right person for the job.
K. Lynn’s art is beautiful and she has a very disarming art, it’s very comfortable and it’s very fluid, it’s very animated and it’s very pretty, it’s very organic. So then within the first five pages when something very traumatic happens it jams you up. I’ll be honest, I’m a dense writer. I put a lot on a page and I knew that you always want to be honorable of where your artistic partners live in this process, but I also knew even moving on issue #2 there was going to be some flex and stretch and I know that K. Lynn felt that.
I could hear teeth grinding over the Internet because we’re switching from an inside of a house to somewhere else – we’re just doing all these different stuff. But I also knew K. Lynn had the chops to do it. You got to push you, just like she pushes me as a writer too. And some of the stuff she’s doing. It’s always fun to work with an artist, especially a very gifted artist like K. Lynn is.
And Issue #1 is out, when can we expect to see Issue #2?
KLS: July 31st.
DM: It’s in previews right now. It’ll be monthly then after that for all six issues.
And where can we find you guys online like Web site and social media?
KLS: http://www.klynnsmith.net/ Twitter: @KLynnTweets @PlumeComic on Facebook
DM: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are all @DirkManning, my website is http://www.dirkmanning.com/
