CB: Hi, Kasra and Menton3, thanks for taking the time and talking to ComicBuzz. For all our readers, could you tell us a bit about yourselves?
KASRA: I’ve worked in the biotech industry for nearly 20 years doing research mostly on cancer and Alzheimer’s diesease. Over the last 10 years, I’ve also worked as a Artist Agent to a number of fine artists, illustrators, and comic book artists such as Ted McKeever, Scott Radke, Ario, Guillermo Rigatierri, and some guy named menton3, as well as Clive Barker through a company called Luna7, which is run by my friends Hans and Amy Rueffert. These days, I have a company called VEI Studios, which is involved in creating limited edition books, providing media production services, global art representation, and developing original content for various media. Aside from that, I’m a big fan of MODOK.
MENTON3: I was born and raised in Mississippi, a fact that most people are ashamed of, but I’m proud of it. There’s a great quality to the South, a kind of darkness that you can’t get in the rest of the country. I’m glad that I got to grow up with it. So I spent most of my life studying occult tradition, eastern philosophy, symbolica, iconograpy, and alchemy. And I’ve been a musician most of my life. I began painting around 2007 full-time, though I still make music from time to time through a solo project called Saltillo. In fact, we’re releasing an album that’s based on a soundrack for the book. I also have an amazing wife and awesome son.
CB: How did you get into the comics industry?
MENTON 3: I took a long time making the decision if I wanted to make comics. Once I did, then I didn’t want to be one of those guys walking around conventions begging for work. So I published by own book, Ars Memoria, to prove to myself that I could do it. And shortly thereafter, I began a relationship with IDW. Chris Ryall really helped me out and gave me a shot. I did Zombies versus Robots: Aventure and after that Silent Hill: Past Life, and I guess I did a good enough job that I got more work.
KASRA: I’m riding Menton’s coattails.
CB: Before we talk about your current project Monocyte, have you worked on other projects together in the past?
KASRA: I’ve been menton3’s Art Agent for the last few years. So we’ve worked closely together on a lot of different projects, but this is the first time we’re doing this co-creator thing. It won’t be the last time.
MENTON3: We did knock around another project together for awhile that we won’t name, but then we got full into this one.
CB: Could you tell me about the origin of the Monocyte comic?
MENTON3: I’m kinda obsessed of Giordano Bruno’s techniques with the art of memory. So I think most of everything I create is an attempt to externalize the internal. But a brief synopsis of how MONOCYTE came to be…first and foremost I consider myself an oil painter, and I got a commission to do a character that I loved as a child. I was doing research and going back and reading a lot of the comics I read as a kid about this particular character, and apparently somwhere along the way I had placed a great deal of information into these stories that simply weren’t there. To be honest, the books sucked! And the character wasn’t half of what I remember him being. Out of curiousity, I started compiling a list of things that weren’t there, and MONOCYTE was pretty much there in front of me. Not to sound too new age, but it was a bit of a epiphany. The groundwork was laid for him in about 15 minutes. It was like seeing a friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time. And over the next year, Kasra helped form who MONOCYTE became.
CB: How would you describe Monocyte?
MENTON3: Well there’s not a lot I can say without giving away the story. One of the difficult things for us is that there’s so much of it that we’ve created, and we want to tell people so badly that it’s hard to describe him without giving away secrets. In symoblica as a whole, the ego was always represented as a knight completely clad in armor. So I definitely say in that regard that MONOCYTE is an extension of that for me, doing things that I can’t do in the real world.
CB: Menton3 at what stage of the process did you know the type of visual style you wanted for Monocyte?
MENTON3: From the word “go” I knew exactly what I wanted to do, from the night I came up with him.
CB: Monocyte is a very dark comic both visually and in the story. During the development of the comic, did you ever think it might be a bit too dark?
KASRA: Over the first few months we were developing the story, our main worry was that it was too mainstream for our tastes! But yeah, that ended up not being an issue once we were done flushing it out. Honestly, it never even crossed my mind that it was too dark. As much as anything, the story is about taking action within darkness. As the story continues to unfold and be revealed, I think people will start to see that more. Being asked this question makes me think we succeeded with issue 1.
CB: Kasra when writing with Menton3, was it a challenge to get the story to compliment Menton3’s art style?
KASRA: Not in the least. We’ve done this book together, bottom to top. We share a studio in Chicago, and with a good lugie I could hit Menton’s bedroom window across the street from my apartment. That all equates to working seamlessly and intensely together. It’s no exaggeration that we spent about 9 months talking about the story, the characters, their voice, the plot, themes, etc before we even thought about writing a word down. And that was maybe the first half of our process. The second half included intense debates, chain smoking, chaos theory, ignoring our significant others, and assailing what we’d created to see whether it would take. By the time all that was done, the writing and drawing of the actual books has been relatively smooth and strangely revealing of story elements we’d yet uncovered.
CB: Menton3 who would say are your artist influences?
MENTON3: Well there’s the obvious stuff…Ashley Wood, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ben Templesmith. But for the most part I don’t draw inspiration from other artists. Art for me is an attempt to externalize the internal. Not to sound cheesy, but I meditate a great deal, and that’s what I believe influences what I do 90% of the time.
CB: Are there any artists/writers whose work you really enjoy?
MENTON3: Ashley Wood, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ben Templesmith, Alan Moore, Alan Hubbard, Kasra. I’m a huge fan of Carl Jung, Francis Yeates, Giordano Bruno, Hugh of St. Victor, and I even like to throw a little Peter Carroll in there every now and again. Then a few big ones like Hiernonymous Bosch, Shakespeare.
KASRA: Lots. Sticking with comic books, I grew up on Bob Layton’s Iron Man and Bill Sienkiewicz’s mind-bending early to mid-80s explosion. The effect of those two has never waned, they form the literal bookends of my influence. Afterwards, I was completely drawn to the painterly creators like George Pratt, Kent Williams, Jon Muth, as well as Barron Storey, who defies any conventional description. Then, I stopped reading comic books for almost 10 years but was brought back hardcore by Ashley Wood, as well as Ted McKeever, who to me is a true comic book auteur. Outside of comics, the list is long, people like Gustave Dore, Hieronymous Bosch, Jean-Francois Millet, Jan Svankmajer, Werner Herzog, Albrecht Durer, Theo Angelopoulos, Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, Lars Von Trier, David Simon, Charles Baudelaire, Bruno Schultz, and on and on.
CB: Could you describe what the journey has been like from creating the comic to getting it into comic stores?
KASRA: Long…but fun. It takes a lot of work to make a creator-owned book, especially early on in your comic book career when you don’t have any kind of name or fan base. We both learned a lot about the industry, the parts of it that are remarkable and explosive all the way through to the parts that seemed designed to suppress and disable new content and ideas. But seeing the book in print and on the shelves…nothing like it.
CB: Menton can you describe the process in creating a page for the Monocyte comic?
MENTON3: We’ll talk about the main plot points on the page, start with a few draft lay-outs of how the story can be told, then I’ll usually make a decision on the final lay-out and get right into it. For the main characteres, I’ve used 3D modeling software to build them as a visual aid. Some scenes and panels will feel better to do with traditional mediums, while others are best suited for digital work. I’ve used pen/ink, watercolors, acrylics, copics, and oils so far along with digital drawing, just depends on what effect I’m going for. At different points I’ll stop and we’ll talk about the art until I feel it’s right and done.
CB: As with the first issue, I believe that all of issues of the mini-series will have contributions from other writers and artists. Can you tell us who they are?
KASRA: Each issue of MONOCYTE is 36 pages with no publisher previews or advertisements, so we decided to add supplemental stories that focus on the human slaves and to otherwise get amazing creators to help us throughout. There’s so many that it’ll be easiest just to list them:
Issue #1
* Incentive cover – Ashley Wood [Hellspawn, Zombies vs. Robots, Lore, Popbot]
* Illuminated manuscript line art – Richard A. Kirk [fine artist/illustrator, Korn album cover artist]
* Olignostic human slave back story – Riley Rossmo (a) [Green Wake, Cowboy Ninja Viking, Proof]
* Antedeluvian human slave back story – David Stoupakis (w/a) [fine artist, Korn album cover artist]
Issue #2
* Incentive cover – Bill Sienkiewicz [Elektra: Assassins, Stray Toasters]
* B cover – Riley Rossmo
* Olignostic human slave story – Ben Templesmith (w/a) [Fell, Wormwood, 30 Days of Night]
* Antedeluvian human slave story – two exciting newcomers: Alan Hubbard (w) and Chris Newman (a)
Issue #3
* Wraparound incentive cover – George Pratt [Wolverine: Netsuke, Enemy Ace: War Idyll]
* B wraparound cover – Ben Templesmith
* Olignostic human slave story – Bill Sienkiewicz (w/a)
* Antedeluvian human slave story – George Pratt (w/a)
Issue #4
* Incentive cover – Phil Hale [fine artist]
* B cover – David Stoupakis
* Human slave story – Barron Storey (w/a) [fine artist/illustrator]
* Human slave story – Steve Niles (w) [30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre]
CB: Kasra have all of the issues of the series been written?
KASRA: They’ve been plotted, prodded, and summarized in long prose. But we’ve held off doing any substantial writing for the printed book until both of our schedules are cleared for at least three weeks straight. That lets us work every day together straight through to the book’s completion. The series is bimonthly, with issue #2 coming out at the end of December. That issue is done. Issue #3 doesn’t come out until the last week of February, which means that sometime around Christmas until mid-January we’ll do issue 3 together.
CB: What comics are you currently reading?
KASRA: The current list includes Meta4 (Ted McKeever), Unwritten (Mike Carey/Peter Gross), Habibi (Craig Thompson), Daytripper (Moon/Ba), Street Angel (Brian Maruca/Jim Rugg), and catching up on Green Wake (Kurtis Wiebe/Riley Rossmo).
MENTON3: We3 and rereading the X-Men: Inferno run in a nice hardcover edition.
CB: Ashley Wood created a variant cover for issue one. How did the collaboration with Ashley come about?
KASRA: Menton and I were putting the pitch together for MONOCYTE during a cold, windy, horrible Chicago February. We had no idea what IDW would think of the pitch, whether it was too out there or just not right for them or…? Basically, we were driving ourselves nuts. One thing we did know was that we wanted some truly special incentive covers, so we came up with a dream list of about six artists. Ash was our issue #1 must-have, from the start.
Once we had the pitch all together and were ready to send it to IDW, we decided to contact two people for their help: Bob Layton and Ashley Wood. I’ve known Ash for the last 7 years or so, mostly virtually, as he lives in Australia. Bob and I have had the chance to get to know one another over the last 5 years.
Bob not only got back to us right away, but he gave us a pointed critique, as well as advice on the pitch that were invaluable along with an amazing quote in support of the project. Ash got back right away, too, saying he was 100% in for the incentive cover and would help any way he could.
That’s probably when we both thought…damn, this is for real. Just an amazing moment for us, and we can’t thank the two of them enough.
The story of getting the email from Ash with the #1 incentive cover image attached, and seeing it for the first time, is something I’ll tell my grandkids.
CB: Do you have more Monocyte stories that you want to tell after the first mini-series is completed?
MENTON3: Very much so. It was originally written to be an on-going series. And if people like it enough, then maybe it eventually can be.
CB: What feedback have you gotten from readers so far?
KASRA: We’ve been overwhelmed by how well people have responded to the book. They’re genuinely taken in by the visuals, designs, storytelling, vibe. It’s amazing to hear people say that they felt confused but that it only made them more curious, rather than it making them just give up and cast the book aside. We’re under no illusion that MONOCYTE is for everyone. But it’s gratifying to know that a lot of people have connected with different parts of its construction.
MENTON3: Everything I’ve gotten back is great, overwhelmingly great. I honestly thought people would have a lot harder time with the book, and I’m surprised that we got as good a response as we got from issue #1. If they like that issue, then they’re going to love issue #2. Issue #1 was just a set up.
CB: What can fans expect in issues 2 of Monocyte?
KASRA: The action begins. Issue 1 gave you the basic world, some of its history, the major characters, and basic conflicts. Issue 2 gives you more of everything on a giant bed of ass-kicking and deviousness!
MENTON3: A great deal more story. The tide changes. You get to know a lot more about MONOCYTE and the surrounding characters. And for the first time we reveal that the bird in the back of his skull talks and is a completely separate form of consciousness.
CB: Any message to the ComicBuzz readers?
KASRA: Thanks so much for picking up the book and trying something different!
If you haven’t seen it yet, we created a free 8-page digital prequel to the series that you can get through IDW Publishing’s app or that you may view here:
http://issuu.com/kasraghanbari/docs/monocyte_prequel
Also, we’ve got a real active Facebook page where we post art previews, industry reviews, and new developments, as well as answer your questions.
http://www.facebook.com/MonocyteComic
Creator-owned books like MONOCYTE depend on individual comic book readers making the choice to try something new. Preordering a book goes a long way in casting this vote! MONOCYTE #2 is on page 160 of October Previews and can be preordered from your local store by giving them order code OCT110381.
