We are delighted to have Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt join us. Matt is a Harvey Award-winning and New York Times best-selling writer and artist. His work includes MIND MGMT, BRZRKR (with Keanu Reeves), Bang!, Eniac, Revolver, 3 Story, Super Spy, 2 Sisters, and Pistolwhip. Margie Kraft Kindt, an educator. Though her essays and stories have appeared in magazines, in newspapers, and on broadcasts and though she has won awards and contests, this is her first published book. With the release of the giant-sized Gilt Frame #1 out this Wednesday from Dark Horse Comics, we got to chat about Gilt Frame with Matt and Margie.
Hi Matt and Margie, it is so wonderful to have you both here with us.
Can you tell us about the origins of Gilt Frame?
MARGIE: Hello, ComicBuzz–it is delightful to be with you and thanks for inviting us to talk about our collaboration on Gilt Frame.
The idea of a collaboration was dished up during one of our family dinners–as usual, table talk turned to the latest true-crime scenario or the best solution to an on-going tv mystery. When I wrongly predicted the resolution to our favorite television mystery, Matthew liked my idea better than the way the program actually unfolded and suggested, “Mom, we ought to write a mystery together.”
About twenty-five years ago I took a break from writing nonfiction and ended up with three novella-length mystery stories featuring the same characters. I pulled them from the shelf and blew away the dust.
Though one of the mysteries contained the seed for Gilt Frame, through our collaboration the mystery developed into a much different book as the setting changed from a rural village to St. Louis and then Paris, as more dynamic and exotic characters were written into the plot, and as twists and back story were added that led to a more complicated investigation and a resolution unforeseen even by us as the characters led the way.
MATT: For me the origin started while I was watching Only Murders in the Building. It was a fun series and I was recommending it to my parents – because they live in a similar building here in St. Louis and the humor was up their alley. What I didn’t expect was for my mom to become (slightly) obsessed with the series and she plotted out all the characters and motives and had the mystery figured out halfway through the season. She had such a smart solution for the series that I thought – this show is genius. BUT…if they don’t have the twist that my mom thought of – and these are my actual words to her – I said “If they don’t do that – WE should do that – make it into a story for that great twist.”
So we waited a season. Then one more just to be sure – and they went in a completely different direction. So I felt safe in taking just that twist and building a story around it. My mom is great at plotting. Great at putting all of these puzzle pieces together and she had a few mysteries already written that would work if we sort of grafted new characters into them and built up our two main lead characters – Sam and Merry – which really act as surrogates for us.
How would you describe Gilt Frame?
MARGIE: Though it started when a pair of gilt French chairs were won at auction, by malchance a motley slew of suspects finds themselves corralled in a Paris antiques gallery–where a lifeless body is still warm–and they are not allowed to leave until questioned. Since none of them have an alibi and because some of them hold long-standing grudges against a few of the others, they soon point fingers and set about the intense business of either confuscating or cracking a grisly murder.
Though his superiors shelf the languishing case, the Chief Inspector is determined that this unsolved brutal slaying will not be chalked up as his first failure, even if he has to fly halfway around the world on the off chance that he can finally make his case.
MATT: A quirky screwball murder mystery with a real gut-punch of a twist ending. Fun, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking. My favorite combination. The mystery in this book plays fair as well. The clues are all there. We give you everything you need. But the thing I don’t like about murder mysteries is that they usually work like fireworks. They’re fun but once they’ve gone off – they’re just gone and you forget about them. I wanted this to be a story that works as a fun mystery but when you’re done, it sticks with you. You care about the characters. You think about them – and after the mystery reveal – you want to go back and read it again with a new and greater understanding. Most mysteries you only need to read once. This one – will hold up to a repeat reading.
What can you tell us about Merry and Sam?
MARGIE: Merry, Sam’s great-aunt, is a spunky septuagenarian who finally found the child she always wanted in her great-nephew. A Stoic to the bone, she knows that she is responsible for creating a rich meaningful life and providing her own happiness, so she plans every day with the intent and excitement to make that happen in spades.
However, she is not one to go it alone–she sees Sam as her buddy and equal–and sets out to provide Sam with a stimulating, nurturing environment so he can develop his interests and reach his potential . . . if he ever figures out what direction to go
Merry believes that she is the mover and shaker, the driving force behind young Sam’s development, but sometimes wonders if maybe she has it backward.
MATT: Sam is “my” character. Our writing process was really more of a roleplaying exercise. We played off of each other – and wrote dialogue and then read it back and forth and responded in character to build it out. Sam’s 20-something. Orphan (probably) – parents have gone missing and he’s been raised by his quirky aunt. Sam’s a bit of a lay-about. Not lazy – but not really motivated to get a conventional job. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s okay living off of Aunt Merry’s money and just gliding through life. He’s got interests – collecting canes and vintage books. But not just any vintage books. He wants books owned by famous authors who’ve written notes in them or dog-eared pages. Maybe a Graham Greene book that was owned by Ian Fleming. Very particular and odd books.
Merry is fully my mom’s character so I’ll let her handle that one. She’s my favorite part – the funniest stuff – and a character that couldn’t exist without my mom writing her. The most colorful character I’ve ever had in one of my books for sure.
There is a French detective who is also trying to solve this case; what can you say about the detective?
MARGIE: The justifiably-confident Chief Inspector Alois Vaillant is the best at what he has devoted his lifetime to doing–untangling knotty crime scenes and amassing damning evidence for convictions. He not only observes everything at a crime scene, but also understands the human psyche and the mind of a killer–with a degree in psychology, he knows how to apply just the right tactics so evil doers are either ready to brag or are relieved ro get out from under the pressure of his slowly-tightening vise.
MATT: He’s the smartest guy in the room (at least he thinks so.) He probably is? Hard to say. I’d say Merry would give him a run for his money. He’s a neat freak. Wants answers. Detail oriented. He has a very specific investigative style – he uses music to coax truthful answers out of his suspects. He’s very dogged. Definitely won’t stop until he finds out who did it. But he’s got Merry and Sam as his competition to solve the crime – who’s going to do it first? I’m pretty sure the French detective will hate Sam and Merry by the end of this book. They are very much opposites.
Do you have a favourite whodunit?
MARGIE: In the 1950s, my grandmother’s small, oven-of-an-attic was full of buried treasure, but the best gem was dug out of a web-covered, broken-down box of old books. One sweltering sun-baked day on the prairie, it was too hot to curl up with a book, but relief enough to splay in front of a screened window to catch a breeze with a book in hand . . . The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle. The timing of my first mystery story was perfect–I was young enough to have the wits scared out of me, yet old enough to know that this was just the beginning.
MATT: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré. Technically a “spy” novel – but the characters are so well done and the whodunit of finding the mole has really never been done better. What’s great is that knowing the ending and finding out who did it – is almost incidental at the end. It’s the journey to get there – the characters that have come alive. All of that makes you just want to go back and read it again – knowing what you know. That’s the real trick. It’s why I don’t necessarily care for straight-up whodunnits. Once you know, then the story usually loses its sticking power. I think that’s what we’re trying to do with this book. Make it something that sticks with you. That you’ll want to go back and re-read. Go back and study the art. See the small things that we’ve embedded into each page.
In terms of a whodunit, will Gilt Frame be epic?
MARGIE: We believe we created a unique, clever, high-energetic mystery, populated with one-off quirky characters who would never be added to the same list for a dinner party. Every one of them is a suspect in a brutal murder at a French antiques gallery and no one has an alibi. They are up against not only Paris’s crack Chief Inspector who races to solve the crime, but also a sleeper, crime-solving duo from the States.The plot is based on a string of true, century-old crimes that were never solved . . . that is, until the Inspector, Merry, and Sam pick up the scent.
While the old master painters moved their canvases and easels around from place to place to find the perfect landscape, the graphic artist for Gilt Frame pulled the characters and scenes out of his head–none of the characters or places existed until the setting and figures formed in his imagination and took worldly shape as pen met paper . . . or rather stylus met screen.
The old master portraitist captured a visage, but the graphic artist takes one image and changes the face so that those same features now express surprise, anger, hostility, sadness, devotion . . . on and on because each of the hundreds of drawings needs to capture a different expression to tell a story.
Because I helped watercolor Gilt Frame, I had the up-close look and the time to notice how much artistic planning, design, and detail went into each panel–sometimes I needed the smallest, finest-tipped brush made to color an arm or leg. Elements were drawn in that would most likely be unnoticed or lost to all of us when the original pages are shrunk for publishing. Yet knowing this, the artist still added those intricate touches because it completed the image and made it right.
Does this make Gilt Frame epic?–each reader will decide.
MATT: I’d say this book works more like a nesting doll. You uncover or solve one mystery – and then you get to a deeper mystery underneath. We’ve got a plan for two more Gilt Frame books/series – each one diving a little deeper into the rabbit hole. The reveal at the end of this book really breaks the formula in a lot of ways – and is just begging us to do more. So yeah – I’d say epic.
Any message for the ComicBuzz readers?
MARGIE: It is a pleasure to be folded into such a dynamic group that shares our passion for the graphic arts–thank you for including us . . . let’s meet up at San Diego Comic-Con.
MATT: Read more comics! And read them monthly! It really helps keep the art form thriving.
Thanks,
We would like to say thank you to Matt and Margie for chatting with us. We would like to wish them the best of luck with Gilt Frame.
