When I last spoke with Mark Wheatley, he
was in the early stages of putting together Les
Vamps, his rather revolutionary electronic anthology of fan fic inspired by
his art. But that’s certainly not the first time he’d been working on the
bleeding edge where art, culture and technology intersect.
For proof, one really need look no
further than Breathtaker, the award-winning,
highly influential serial graphic novel that serves as one of the more
significant artistic achievements in the earlier stages of both his and
co-creator Marc Hempel’s respective careers. Sadly, despite being a solid
seller with strong critical and fan support, the collected Breathtaker has remained out of print for years.
But that’s all going to change in the
near future.
Recently, Wheatley and Hempel have
launched an Indiegogo campaign to underwrite some absolutely necessary
pre-production work for a planned release of a newly-reconstructed and remastered
edition of Breathtaker. But they
really need the support of both their long-time fans as well as new discerning
readers like you if they’re going to make this all happen, and Mark Wheatley is
here to explain why.
Why
don’t we start off with your elevator pitch for the book?
Breathtaker, a beautiful succubus, a
girl so alluring that anyone would be willing to die for her love.
Well, why bring Breathtaker back—and why now?
Long ago, the plan was that we would
follow up Breathtaker: Love, Death, Sex, Power
with a second Breathtaker. I even had
the bare bones of the plot worked out.
What
can you tell us about that follow-up without giving too much away, and why didn’t
that book ever see publication?
The story was set about 20 years
after the first story. I was a little concerned that it would change the flavor
of the story to set it in the future. I didn’t want the focus of the story to
become a science fiction tale about a future world. But I thought I could get
around that.
The larger problem was political. The [book’s original] editor, Mike Gold, left DC Comics shortly after Breathtaker was published and his
projects became orphans. Even though we had exceptional sales on Breathtaker and won an award, we
couldn’t get any interest in a sequel.
Then Vertigo started up and they
collected the books under that imprint. It became a constant, ongoing good
seller for them and eventually they approached us about the sequel. Instantly I
was nostalgic for working with Mike Gold!
Why?
Because the Vertigo editors were telling
us what our next Breathtaker story
should be. They were telling us who our characters were. They were very
intrusive.
Now—I’ve worked well on company-owned
properties in tight cooperation with editors and publishers. But Marc and I
created and own Breathtaker. We
thought the ideas we were being handed were wrong-headed and it did not look
like a good idea to start a project that could turn into a train wreck.
If
you already had that sequel roughed out, why didn’t it come out under another
company’s imprint—or even your own Insight Studios banner? Why hasn’t that come
out before now?
We launched a long process of regaining
our rights, and about ten years ago they were returned. Since then we have
optioned the property for a film and went through the process of the studio
changing leadership and dumping us. That wasted some time. And then we just got
busy with life and other projects.
Along the way, Breathtaker was featured in the Norman Rockwell Museum’s LitGraphic
show, and then ended up touring museums across the US for several years. And
every time we talked, Marc and I continued to want to do this project. And
finally our schedules lined up and we could see a way to do it. We got a
publisher on board and that’s when we could see how a schedule to get it done
would work.
Your
primary creative partner in this endeavor was Marc Hempel, someone you’ve done
many a project with before and since. But I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you
talk about Marc’s work.
So,
why do you like working with him? What about his approach makes him such a storyteller,
not to mention good artist, and what are some of the other qualities that help
mark him as a good creative partner?
Nah—Marc is a real pain to work with. I
mean—he insists on only doing his very best work! I mean, how do you work with
somebody like that? [Laughter]
To me, there are just a few people who
have created comics like it was a language that was their native tongue. Will
Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Bernard Krigstein are the prime historical figures.
I’m not talking about favorite artists or creators of favorite characters. I’m
talking about people who can bring static image to life and make us feel every
emotion of a story. Well, for my money, there is no better living example of
this kind of comics creator than Marc Hempel. I will work with Marc anytime and
anywhere.
What
else can you tell us about the titular character and her story without giving
too much away?
Siren. Temptress. Man-eater. Call Chase
Darrow what you want, but whatever the label, the truth is that she is the
Breathtaker: a nice young woman who possesses the power to love a man to death.
Chase Darrow might be the only real, living example of a succubus.
Breathtaker is part horror
story, about a woman with the power to drain men of their very life force...
part romance, because her lovers are her willing victims... part crime story, as
Chase is on the run from a government that has branded her a criminal... and
part superhero story: she is pursued by The Man, a popular television and
merchandising figure who also happens to have extraordinary powers and
abilities that he is using to hunt down and capture Chase in an effort to boost
his sagging Nielsen ratings.
That
last, prescient line concerning The Man’s actions being driven by his ratings
is but one of the aspects that still fascinate me about that book. In fact, as much
as I enjoy and admire your other efforts, Mark, Breathtaker has always held a particularly fond spot in this critic’s
heart. And it still stands, for me at least, as a real high-water mark in your
early career, as well as an informal yardstick to critique the rest of your
work.
So
I was wondering, what place does it hold in your catalog, personally, and just
how important was this particular project to you artistically, professionally
and even personally?
Breathtaker is tied with EZ Street as my personal favorite
graphic novel project.
I created and wrote Breathtaker and was thrilled with how Marc Hempel designed and
brought it to life. At the time I wrote Breathtaker,
I had only just reached the point where I felt I was in control of my writing,
that I could chart a course for my story and characters and see them reach that
ending at the pace and intensity I wanted. After that point it has been more of
a deepening of detail and character. Before that, it had been an undisciplined
smash of imagination and energy. But my only regret has been the long interruption
of the story of Chase Darrow!
Both here and on the book’s Indiegogo campaign page, you’ve described Breathtaker as part horror story, part romance, part crime drama, and partly superhero tale. Which begs the question, where’d this chimera come from? What
were the circumstances surrounding its birth, and what influenced its unique genetic
makeup?
Marc and I had just finished
collaborating on Jonny Quest for
several years. Before that we had done Blood
of the Innocent, Mars and Be an Interplanetary Spy together. Those
projects had all been very close collaborations, usually due to tight
deadlines. So we were involved in each other’s territory. I was often writing
with Marc heavily editing. Then the art was a combination of each of our
pencils and inks.
On Spy
I had to come as close as I could to imitating Marc’s style because the
contract was with Marc. On Mars I was
penciling, but Marc was doing layouts and inks. By the time we were free to
think about a project like Breathtaker,
we were burned out for working together that closely. We had intended to head
into our own directions. But the freelance life is all about feast or famine.
And I soon saw that Marc was at loose ends. He was working up a series of
exotic and erotic paintings and had no income project pending. So I decided to
create something that might make us some money.
On my next writing day, away from the
bustle of Insight Studios, I came up with the name Breathtaker and in just a few minutes the idea of a lovely succubus
spun into an elaborate plot. I wrote it up and pitched it to Marc. We spent a
month or so working up a proposal with plots and character designs. Then we
pitched it to Mike Gold at DC Comics. He called us inside an hour after getting
the proposal and we started negotiations. It was the fastest acceptance I’ve
ever gotten on a project.
On the other hand, we were then setting
up the creator owned contract at DC Comics and it took their lawyers and our
lawyer over 14 months to work out the final language of the agreement. And it
took us about a year to do the work of creation. So almost three years after I
came up with the name, Breathtaker
reached the public.
Considering
that you worked closely with him on so much prior to Breathtaker, how much influence did Marc—and Mike Gold, for that
matter—have upon the final shape of the book? And how much changed between your
original conception and the final product?
We stuck very close to the plots in the
proposal. But Marc originally started drawing the book in the Jonny Quest style. I knew he had a much
more interesting personal style and I had a long talk with him after he was
about eight pages into it. We scrapped those pages and Marc started over in the
style you know today.
And Mike Gold is a great editor. He is
able to get more results from a few careful comments than many editors who have
written pages of direction.
In the case of Breathtaker, he gave us a safe place to work and encouraged us to
push the limits of our creativity. He also asked me what would happen if Chase
had a pet dog she loved. That single question deepened the character and
directly resulted in the elk sequence.
Now,
the fact is that you have an established publisher lined up to reprint and
distribute the book in a variety of formats. So, could you explain again why
you guys need to do fundraising to put the book out? I mean, you just upload
the old files and your work’s done, right?
The publisher is on board to get the
book into the hands of the reading public. They have extensive worldwide
distribution and excellent book store penetration. And they are using their
credit with the printer to get sufficient quantities of the book into print.
That leaves us with about eight months of restoration work to put the book into
shape.
Breathtaker was a
pre-digital book. There was no good way to save over 200 pages of color art,
except to keep the art. We have about 80% of the color pages in storage. But
we need to make that work fit for print.
Age has not been kind. The line art no
longer fits the color art. A lot of
digital manipulation is needed to get this to print quality. Some of the art
was even torn in half in the process of scanning, back in the day. And the
pages that are missing will need to be reconstructed. So the money we are
raising is going to pay for the rent and electricity while we work to re-create
these pages. If we reach our goal, we should have some budget left to get
started on the sequel. For me, that will be the real reward.
Playing
the devil’s advocate once again, I gotta wonder how hard this digital cleaning
process and such really is. I
mean, don’t you just scan it and then push a couple buttons and it’s done? And
if it’s not that easy, could you describe what the process of salvaging a page
requires, and how long that typically takes?
I wish it was that easy! [Laughs again]
Each page is two pieces—except for the
torn pages—so two scans at least. Then the work starts of matching color and
fitting the line art to the color art. The line art is on film and the color
art is on paper. Film and paper respond to temperature, humidity and age in
very different ways. They really do not
match. It comes down to panel-by-panel manipulation to align the line art
and color art—and then have the page look correct as a whole. I can paint a
page from scratch in almost the same amount of time. And, as mentioned, we
don’t have all the art.
Actually, this is a good place to ask
anyone out there to contact us if you have access to a color original Breathtaker page. We have been lucky to
get several pages scanned and returned to us from collectors. But we still need
more!
Okay.
That all sounds reasonable, but I still need to ask: Isn’t all that stuff you
just talked about the job of the publisher to do that work for you, or to pay
you to do it? After all, most people would likely assume that that kind of
pre-production cost is supposed to be borne by the publisher, and not the
creators, right?
You make me nostalgic for the old days—back
when publishers had high sales and were able to make substantial advances for
production.
In this case, we are pretty much
financing this work on our own. We got a small signing fee, but nothing
approaching what we need to have the time to do this work to the quality it
deserves. We will get a royalty of course, and in a few years of sales that
might amount to something. That doesn’t help us now.
Let’s
say that there’s someone reading this who is still unconvinced that this is a
cause worth supporting. What might you say to that might help sway them to
support your efforts?
Well—your money is not vanishing into
thin air. We are giving you high value rewards in return.
Take a look at all the books and
original art that a very little money will buy. Marc Hempel and I don’t often
do commissions. But this is an opportunity to have us draw anything you can
imagine. One of my publishers saw a good deal here and has used this
opportunity to get a low cost cover for one of his publications. And I applaud
his willingness to help out!
What
did you get from the experience of creating Breathtaker
that might have been a surprise, an unexpected development or even the gift of
a lesson that you’ve carried ever since?
It took about 15 years before the young,
new exciting artists in comics and animation started coming up to me at
conventions to let me know that Breathtaker
had changed their lives and inspired them to create their own comics and TV
shows. Really, that kind of feedback is priceless. And I never expected it.
What
do you hope that readers get from Breathtaker?
A very entertaining evening of reading
and some insights into how many ways people can love.
Anything
you’d like to add before I let you get back to it?
If anyone wants to see more about Breathtaker and my other projects, I
have a very active Facebook Fan Page and a gallery site.
And thanks for the great questions!
Completely
my pleasure, Mark!