What makes a man? Strength? What kind? The ability to protect those around you? Or something else? Steve Orlando and Phillip Kennedy Johnson discuss how violence and manhood have become inextricably linked and their upcoming graphic novel KILL A MAN.
Fore more information on KILL A MAN, click here.
Interview, as told to Troy-Jeffrey Allen
A small Colorado town. Three drug runners with a van filled with product. Two police officers investigating suspicious activity. A heroic young woman with a violent past, an innocent little brother and her dead father’s .38 police special. And a throng of ravenous townspeople out of their minds with drug lust. This is THE KILLING JAR.
A Wave Blue World’s THE KILLING JAR is a wild ride. So wild that Don Murphy, the producer of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies (a pretty wild ride in their own right) deemed it “the most fun you can have legally.” That’s a bold statement. And writer Justin Zimmerman and artist Russ Brown are here to back it up. In the following discussion, the creative team behind The Killing Jar explains why their cross between Preacher, La Femme Nikita, and Dawn of the Dead is a senses shattering experience! Keep reading.
Justin Zimmerman: I was working on a feature length adaptation of a Stephen King piece and Transformers producer Don Murphy challenged me to write something from scratch. I came up with THE KILLING JAR, and decided to tackle it as a sequential comic. I “Brian K. Vaughaned” every chapter, leading up to a crazy cliffhanger. I would not recommend your first indie comic experience to be an over 200-page original graphic novel, but it was what the story needed to be. And fortunately, I met Russ.
Russ Brown: I’d never dedicated any real time to comic book art. I’d been a reader, and had dabbled in character creation, but for something this ambitious, I had to learn a whole new skillset. We BOTH did, and we dove in headfirst January, 2008. Three screaming freeway hours away from each other, workshopping Justin’s creation into the beautiful and terrifying book that exists now.
Justin Zimmerman: It took YEARS. I wanted an old-school black and white film look, so we shot from the pencils. I digitally inked and toned every page, and lettered to boot. And every page was something we learned from. I wanted a strong but fallible female lead. I wanted survival-horror. I wanted neowestern. I wanted blood.
Russ Brown: 1,479 individual email threads over years of collaboration. No stone remained unturned with Justin. He was both wide-open to creative suggestions and madly specific when it counted. He didn’t simply learn how to write a comic book script, he learned how to design, edit, print, distribute, and advertise a book. And man, they are beautiful books.
Justin Zimmerman: It is pretty remarkable that after all of this time, it’s finally been remastered and readied for the direct market thanks to A WAVE BLUE WORLD. It’s been out in the book market for a bit, but a graphic novel isn’t real to me unless it’s on a comic book store shelf, and on August 26th, that’s where THE KILLING JAR will finally be! I’m so excited people are going to be seeing Russ’ art the way it was always meant to be seen.
Russ Brown: It’s a hand-made labor of love, and after 12 years, still alive and delivering its vicious, mindless mobs and the horrors of small-town secrets with the meanest of kicks. It’s always had a strange resonance with its readers, and it always manages to catch passing eyes on the shelf or the convention tables. Now everyone gets to find out why.
Justin Zimmerman: I’ve been so careful with THE KILLING JAR. It has such an important place in my heart. It’s always circled as a property, but I’d never let it happen unless I was involved to help shepherd the production along. To me, it loves on the page, first and foremost… and it’s worth fighting for to keep that original vision – and Anna and co. – intact. I love each and every single one of those characters – even the worst of ‘em – but it’s Anna’s story, period.
Russ Brown: It’s a hard day to come to the realization that there is sickness inside your home. It’s harder still when you know that you might be the only one to see it, that you might have to fight your way out, or be a shield for your loved ones. Anna is that person in THE KILLING JAR. She is neither hopeless nor cynical. She is someone who is constantly underestimated, and in spite of everything she endures, is strong and willful. And while surrounded by corruption, brutality and desperate addiction, she is utterly capable.
Justin Zimmerman: What’s next for THE KILLING JAR? That’s up to the readers. I hope they enjoy it as much as I do to this day. It’s in their hands, literally, now!
THE KILLING JAR will be available anywhere you buy books on August 18, 2020. For more information, click here.
There are those among us, all of whom have had near death experiences, who now have an ability called a Soul-Skill which allows them access to the skill-sets of the dead; fighter, mechanic, sniper. Anything. This ability connects them in this realm to the soul, and its skill, in the next. Pilot. Hacker. Assassin. Anything.
While not everyone who touches death is able to retain this ability those who do have formed two warring guilds: Caretakers and Dark Hearts. The Caretaker’s mission? To use the power of the dead to protect the living. Welcome to Graveyard Wars.
All his life Ethan Noble felt he was different; unstable, crazy. How else to explain his ability to master so many different skills only to have them vanish time after time. All her life Carter Noble has tried in vain to help her brother. Raise him, shield him, understand him. An impossible task, even for a twin, because no matter how hard Ethan tried to explain his behavior Carter was never able to understand and any attempt to enlist help from Sebastian, their father, was met with an icy stare and stony silence.
What all three Nobles will soon learn is that in a world where the secrets someone takes to their grave are no longer safe you need family more then ever. The problem? When Ethan and Carter uncover a network of lies that led to their mother’s death they’re lead straight to their father.
Check out the interview with Ablaze Comics for Graveyard Wars below!
ABLAZE: How did GRAVEYARD WARS come about as a project?
AJ Lieberman: If you mix the right amount of prescription antihistamines with large doses of Red Bull you’d be amazed at what you can come up with. Also, I have a fascination with people who are convinced they can communicate with the dead – clairvoyants, spiritualists, mediums – there’s a lot of showmanship with most but a few are seemingly genuine. The leap I made was wondering what connected the ones that did seem to have some kind of… extra connection to the dead and, for me, the answer was: near death experiences.
ABLAZE: How did Chad Stahelski, John Wick franchise director, and his company 87Eleven, get involved with the book as executive producers?
AJ Lieberman: It’s amazing, right? An absolute dream. Chad was, a while back, attached to the feature version of one of my other books (COWBOY, NINJA, VIKING). Through that relationship I got Chad a preview of GRAVEYAWRD WARS. It’s really the perfect merging of story and a director’s sensibility / talent.
ABLAZE: In terms of audience, who is GRAVEYARD WARS for? What age range do you see this appealing most to?
AJ Lieberman: Let’s forget age for a moment. It’s really for anyone who likes dark stories; stories that involve family betrayals and secrets (that literally aren’t revealed until the last page of the book).
It’s for anyone who likes broken heroes who can see the right thing to do but are unable to choose them…
It’s also for anyone who LOVES ACTION … but action like it’s never been seen before. Because of the ability of these characters to access the skills of the dead, a fight between two people is really a fight between those two people and all the different fighters / killers they grab while fighting — so what a reader sees is the two fighters “ghosted” with 2 “soul skills”. The pages can get crowded as they grab and discard skills.
Which brings me to the art. If you’re a reader who puts art before story, then we got you covered there as well. Andrew Sebastian Kwan KICKED ASS doing the all the action sequences but also brought the drama between the twin siblings into poignant focus.
ABLAZE: You chose to do this in spot color, instead of full color. Why? What went into your decision to do so?
AJ Lieberman: Two factors – story and art – Andrew had fully colored a few pages but something just felt off about this type of story rendered in such “real life” detail – the thought was that we wanted a much more muted approach to the story and once Darren & Andrew came up with the color design I thought it was perfect with Andrew’s art.
Hardcover: 9781950912131 | Softcover: 9781950912148
AJ Lieberman: AJ Lieberman has written for Disney, Universal Studios, Image Comics (COWBOY NINJA VIKING, TERM LIFE), Scholastic (THE SILVER SIX) and DC (Gotham Knights, Harley Quinn, War Games). AJ’s goal in life is to never have a “real” job and so far things seem to be working out.
Andrew Sebastian Kwan: An illustrator from Toronto, Canada. Influenced by anime, caped crusaders, and movie about galaxies far, far away, Andrew has a passion for creating comics, telling stories and moonlights as a poster artists and graphic designer.
Darren Rawlings: Darren is the owner / creative director of Thinkmore Studios an animation house that provides 2D & 3D animation, motion graphics, and storyboards. His clients include Discovery Channel, BBC, Sony, Scholastic, Warner Bros. History Channel, and Netflix.