FIND STEAMPUNK A BIT CONFUSING? JOE KELLY'S NOT SURPRISED
July 10, 2000
Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo's wrap-up to their first Steampunk is going to be shipping a little late - currently scheduled for 08/02, a little more than a month removed from its 06/28 solicitation date - and for good reason according to Kelly. Not only will the issue be double-sized, but Kelly expects it will go a long way in "clarifying things for people".
The second story arc then will begin after a short break with issue #6."And that one is really going to be clear," Kelly said chuckling. "It's like literally going to start out with someone explaining what's happened to this point, just in case people didn't get it."
Kelly is well aware of some of the criticism the series has received so far from some readers - that the story and the art is very "dense", and maybe even somewhat confusing. And according to the writer, as it turns out, it was all part of the plan from the beginning.
"I definitely intended for it to be disorienting," explained Kelly. "The are two kind of elements at play here.One is that when Chris and I sat down and talked about the series, we both agreed that we love long-form storytelling, like graphic novels. And so we has always intended for this to be like a 25-issue arc, so we could pace it as it were an epic graphic novel. And so, given that amount of time and that sense of space, the first five-issues is literally like 'Act I'. So there is that angle of it.we're not giving everything away, we're not explaining everything. Because that will happen over the course of the series.
"The other part of it is, is that I figured this guy wakes up after a 100 years into this [bleeped]-up Victorian world, I want the audience to feel his disorientation, as and he starts to clear his head, we clear our heads along with him.
"The hope was this would be fun, and not confusing and scary," Kelly continued. "We hoped it would be challenging and exciting, because it's different. People are always clamoring for something different, and then you give it to them, and you find out they didn't want something that different. But then that all being said, there are absolutely elements that looking back I would have done differently, like things I would have cleared up a little bit. Everyone sort of went so gung-ho on this book - which is great - I think we all turned the volume up to 11, making it a little hard to follow. But if I simplify storytelling a little, and Chris simplified layouts a little, I think it would have been a little more even keeled, and I know that is something we're all going to discuss for the next arc.
"I knew I wanted to take chances with the storytelling in this book. So that was definitely conscious. I think the biggest sort of risk I took was to use muscles that I haven't really used a lot in comics, which are like the weird, dark gothic kind of muscles, and definitely playing around with storytelling to mess with the audience's perceptions.that sort of thing. That's the thing that always cracks me up when I hear people say 'I don't understand, why did you do it like this?', thinking we didn't do it on purpose. Of course we did it that way on purpose. We didn't just roll out of bed and create the thing.
"Chris and I both felt that in this current market, where you really can't predict is what going to sell in terms of new properties, we thought why not give it our best shot and do something that was both fun and challenging for ourselves and the readers. We thought hopefully we'd be raising the bar, not only for our own work, but for everyone else. Sometimes experiments go great, and sometimes they fail, and I honestly don't know where ours is right now, because I get a lot of people who say they're confused and I get this as many people who say this is the most interesting and innovative thing they're reading right now.
"Fans can be brutally honest, and I'd say I get a slight majority who say 'I don't know exactly what is going on but I like it, but I have a lot of faith'. Then there's a minority who say, 'I just really don't get it and I don't know if I like it, and I feel stupid when I read it.' And you don't want that. It's never been a case of us trying to show off how smart we are. It's as much as a trial and error thing for Chris and I as much as for the people picking it up.
Kelly reports that Issue #5 wraps up the cast in London, and by the end of the arc, readers will you know who and what the series is about. "Without it coming coming out on blatant language, you know what happened between Absinthe and Cole, and how it contributed to this world existing," he promised. "I think it's pretty clear...it literally says in the plot, 'if they don't know what this is, I can't make it any clearer'. So that part of it starts to come out. And then when we start the next arc with issue #6, there is going to be a lot less of the flashing back, and when we do flashback it will be in a way readers are more used to seeing it - less spontaneous flashing back and more Cole recounting his memories.
"The thing that is fun for this book for me is that I definitely don't make any apologies for it, because I really feel like we tried to do something different and this was our best shot at it. It's really a fun story and we hope readers will stick with it. It's really an interest up and down rollercoaster that Chris and I go though all the time.
"We think Steampunk is the kind of book you can read three or four times, because there is so much in there, and when you look at the tapestry at the whole we think it will be really satisfying.
"The first arc is basic training," Kelly concluded with a laugh. "It's going to be really tough, but once you get through to the other side, I think you'll be really pumped about the stories coming down the pike.
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