Alex de Campi: Clearing The SmokeBy Shaun Manning Sometimes, things just sneak up on you. In a summer of hyped crossovers, DC battling Marvel for most “event” tie-ins you may or may not have to read to catch the full story, it would be easy for a new, non-licensed property miniseries from IDW to simply slip beneath the radar. But word of mouth is a powerful thing, and enthusiasm for Smoke has been uproarious. I had a chance to chat with writer Alex de Campi about the book, how she came to fame, and what happens next.
Shaun Manning: First up, I’d like to hear a bit about your background, how you came to the comics business, etc. You've got quite an impressive website, an entertaining blog, and an unusual bio.
Alex de Campi: My background's quite simple. I'm a journalist turned investment banker turned slacker writer, who occasionally races boats across oceans and has directorial ambitions.
We were a very artistic household, my family. I was always being dragged to museums as a kid, and my mother was always reading poetry out loud or playing the piano. And then my parents were surprised when I wanted to be an artist. I even went to the Rhode Island School of Design for the summer to study graphic design. I was OK. I never would have been great. But because I got good grades, so my parents (who, note well, both studied photography at university) said they wouldn't pay for art school, but would pay for me to go to a proper university. I went to Princeton – like Jim Lee, who was there a few years before me. My parents wanted me to major in something useful, like Politics or Economics. I majored in Art History.
Moved to Hong Kong straight after university. Wanted to have adventures. Spent a couple of years as a journalist, poor as a church mouse, living on white wine and canapés from gallery openings. Gave that up to get rich as an investment banker. I worked as an equity analyst and wrote for the regional strategy team. Asia's a riot. One of my favorite places on earth. I made loads of money, and spent loads of money. Raced across the China Sea four years in a row. I had a fabulous time. Hong Kong was mine, darlings. I began to burn out – as well I should, I wasn't just burning the candle at both ends, I had a blowtorch trained on its middle, too – when the markets crashed in 1997. The bank shuttled me round Latin America to London, and I left them on the turn of the century. I did a variety of things, and drifted more and more towards writing. My life has been one big detour through Stuff Other People Thought I Should Do, back to What I Always Wanted. Still, the trip was eminently worthwhile, and the scenery was great. No regrets.
As for comics, when I was a nipper, I read X-MEN and all the old DC fantasy line series: ARION, WARLORD, and so forth. Hey, most of them were crap, but what did I know? I was 8. Gave them up about the time I discovered boys. Then I got back into comics a few years after I moved to the UK. A friend of my ex-husband's was moving barracks and gave us a huge stack of old 2000AD and Vertigo titles. That brought me back into it, and I started going to Orbital Comics on Old Compton Street every week for my sequential crack. Then Ryan Richards, who is the next Grant Morrison if ANYONE is the next Grant Morrison, was staying at my house one summer and working on his Epic pitch. I thought I'd give it a try, too, and wrote early drafts of both SMOKE and my Humanoids series, MESSIAH COMPLEX. Then, you know, the usual argy-bargy of getting published, and here I am.
Manning: Before we get on to Smoke, the project that seems destined to bring you fame and fortune, I'd like to talk a bit about your past projects. I seem to recall a bit of controversy over your aborted revamp of Scorpion for Marvel. How difficult was walking away from that project, and how has it affected your interactions with other publishers?
de Campi: It was easy to walk away from AMAZING FANTASY. It was a C-list title being rushed out with an appalling artist. To grab onto it would have smacked of desperation, frankly. I have friends in the business who have seized such bones thrown to them by DC or Marvel, and then been railroaded into putting out a book they were not proud of. Sometimes this is due to changes in editorial direction; sometimes due to being saddled with a bad artist (or, if an artist, being sucked into The Curse Of The Quitely Fill-In). For every one of them, this has caused enormous repercussions on their careers. "Oh yeah, he did that terrible A----- miniseries, didn't he? Jeez. What a hack." The older you get, the more you realize that "no" is often the best game in town.
The Marvel thing has overall had a positive effect on my relations with other publishers. It gave me a bit of good publicity as someone who took a stand for quality over commoditization. After the story got leaked to Rich Johnston (not by me, I add!), I got lots of emails from writers and artists, retailers, and not a few editors, all basically saying, "You go, girl." And it means, thank the heavens, I will never have to pitch another crappy re-vamp again.
Manning : Smoke #1 has been out for a little while now, with issue two to be released July 13. Praise has been unanimous and ebullient. Please describe the book, why people should buy it, and anything else you might want readers to know.
de Campi : SMOKE is a political thriller with a strong dose of the absurd. In comic terms, I suppose it's like a more gritty, less slapstick TRANSMET, or a less mystical INVISIBLES. It's also had comparisons to V FOR VENDETTA. If you like those books, you'll probably like SMOKE.
The basic story is that a black-ops soldier working for the government, Rupert Cain, is shaken out of his almost sleepwalking existence by the murder of an old friend. The murder seems to be tied up with a terrorist kidnapping in London of the visiting OPEC president. Striving journalist Katie Shah is trying to cover the terrorist attack, as it's the story that could make her career. The series is the story of what happens to them, as they chase shreds of truth through a London full of lies.
Rupert is about that stage you get to when you're in your early 30s, and one day you look around and think, "Wait. How did I get here?" We all start out so full of dreams and things we're going to do, hell, how many people's parents told them they could be president of the United States? And we have the best intentions… then suddenly we're 30, with a job working for The Man, a long-term partner, mortgage, and car loan. Rupert, who started off as a solider and a patriot, finds himself nothing but a hired killer. He decides it's time to go back to doing things that he believes in. Once his old commanding officer is killed, he figures he has nothing left to lose. In this, he is wrong.
Katie is the girl who never got the breaks. She works hard, she's a damn good tabloid reporter, but she's never really made it. She's that little voice in all of us that screams, why not me? Why hasn't anyone picked me? It's not fair! I could do that! Now, they say that luck is really the name for what happens when preparation meets opportunity, and Katie gets very lucky in the book. She does something pretty damn stupid, figuring that she has everything to gain. In this, she is right – but not in the way she expects.
People have made a big deal about the Right to Beauty Brigade (my terrorists) and how absurd yet probable they are. My attitude toward terrorism is that it is the most selfish and venal activity imaginable, nothing but vicious self-aggrandizement at the expense of others' lives. So rather than creating terrorists who can hide behind a veil of vaguely noble aims, I created terrorists whose aims are obviously purely shallow and selfish. We find out in Book 2 that they do have a certain grace in their pathos, but I still believe that the aims of terrorism are always shallow when compared to the cost.
Manning: What similarities do you see between the current British government and the government in Smoke? Would you say the analogy is direct, projection, or just a "what if?" Same question, regarding the American government.
de Campi: As I always say, the situation in SMOKE is a series of unrealized possibilities of the British and other governments. I've also adapted macroeconomic situations I've witnessed in various Asian and Latin American countries where I've lived. Some if it will strike the reader as ridiculous extrapolations, to be sure, but I've been through currency crises and large-scale government cover-ups and kleptocracies, and the house of cards is more delicate than one might think. Corruption is also just as widespread in the so-called First World as it is in the Third – we just choose not to see it. Halliburton has made $2bn profiteering off the Iraqi war. It's exactly the same sort of "favored-friend" deals that one used to see in Malaysia in the 1990s, with valuable construction contracts given to dubiously competent companies like Renong, run by Bumiputra friends and associates of the government. (But also, Malaysia was the first country to recover from the Asian crisis, because it basically stuck two fingers up at Western investors, went a bit fascist, and solved all its own problems). In France, Chirac's a crook, and everyone knows it, the amusing game is just watching him trying to manage his succession so he won't get arrested when his presidential term ends. And in the UK, what really did happen to the troublesome Dr Kelly?
Manning: Did you know your break out hit would cost $7.50 an issue, or was that just a happy surprise?
de Campi: It's not a happy surprise that it cost $7.50 an issue; it's meant a lot of people haven't bought the book because of the price tag. Frankly, I wish the book had cost $5. I reckon we would have sold twice as many.
Manning: You've got a few short films in the works, as well as a feature length. How are those coming along, and will they be widely available once completed?
de Campi: The film is getting intense right now. All my deadlines have concertina'd and I have a week to get out an 80-page GN and then start on script rewrites for the film. The film is called M, and is a supernatural thriller. I guess it can best be described as IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, if it were a Japanese horror film, and starred a girl. Budget is about $3m US, and principal photography is scheduled for Spring '06. Now, this is feature filmmaking, so loads of things can go wrong and usually do, but I believe my producers are both nice enough and nasty enough to get the film made. That means, oh, probably a winter '06 theatrical release.
The shorts I've been neglecting, to be honest. I'm so swamped with other things, and I need to get a spec feature script finished that a producer is quite keen on, that all the little 6 and 10 minute films have just gone out the window. I've also been increasingly concentrating on music videos, as in some ways they get better distribution and marketing than most short films thanks to the involvement of the band and their label.
Manning: Anything you can tell us about upcoming projects?
de Campi: Oh, comic stuff? My next book is coming out in February 2006. It's an all-ages manga. Then in summer '06 my sci-noir series MESSIAH COMPLEX launches in France, from Les Humanoids Associes. There are more in the pipeline.
My English stuff is mainly manga, and then I've got several projects for the French/European market. Sorry, America, I just sell more books doing manga and European. If I have a hit, I clear 100,000 copies for a creator-owned work, and the publishers pay page rates that enable me to get absolute top-flight artists. I'm taking a couple of projects to San Diego, so I may be doing a US-format book or two next year. I also have to sort out the schedule for the rest of SMOKE (it was conceived as a maxi-series). I won't be doing a lot in US-format, but hopefully the few books will stand out as very unique, high-quality work.
I won't be doing spandex any time soon. I have nothing against superheroes, but all this crossover garbage that's going on right now can frankly just fuck right off. Second-rate stories, conceived by committee, saturated with continuity? No thanks. I don't even know who these people are. Donna Troy? What? Wasn't she that bird off STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION? Ugh. Wake me when it's over.
Other than comics, I'm doing an animated music video with Jon Nagl (fallingsky.blogs.com ), for Flipron's flipron.co.uk) "Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead". I'm writing/directing, and Jon's animating. Keep checking back on my website – we'll put up a stream of the video (and of any others we do) on my site at the end of summer. Animation is fantastic, because there is no budgetary limit to imagination. We blow up the Earth in the video – twice! It's great.
We're enjoying it so much, we're thinking of setting up a company to make animated videos. The idea is to do a slate of three videos for up and coming UK bands, e.g. our mates, for free – using very different songs/stories/animation styles – then throw the doors open and start charging people money. I'm in the process of negotiating to get an agent right now, so we'll have proper marketing at last. A writer spends half her time marketing. It's exhausting, and I'm now at the point where I really need to outsource that. Work-wise, I'm flat-out. As my dad would say, "them's high-class problems." Long live high class problems.
|