Thom Zahler: Love, Laughs and Capes

By Tim O'Shea

Thom Zahler entered the O’Shea creator radar a few years back, when we met at Baltimore Comic-Con. I’ve been meaning to interview Zahler since then, and finally got a chance recently to discuss his current project, Love and Capes ("...a heroically super romantic comedy situation comedy in comic book form..."). Enjoy. The next time I get in the shower, I must say, I’ll think of Thom’s rough pencils.

Tim O’Shea (TOS): When writing Love and Capes, which depends on timing and pacing for the comedy to work--how many revisions do you go through on a single joke--just to get it right (from a comedic sense)?

Thom Zahler (TZ): I do most of the revisions in my head before I put pencil to paper, so that's hard to say. Here's my process, though.

Because of the way Love and Capes breaks down, I have about 48 gags per issue. I've got a series of post-it notes on my kitchen wall that have the punchlines to jokes, to help me remember the ideas I come up with. I've always got a vague arc for the individual issue. The second issue, for instance was about the two of them picking out Christmas presents for each other. So I introduced that early on, and everything else was hung on the skeleton of that plot, to get to the ending I had in mind.

So, if I come up with a joke for later in the book, I'll write it down on a Post-It and pop it on the wall. This allows me to move jokes around, change the sequence. And, at the end of the book, it always seems I could use more space, so it helps me make sure that I have enough room to finish the story. I also try to make sure that the book has the right texture, the right cadence. The book's a humor book, but that doesn't mean I don't throw in a couple of "aw, sweet" or cliffhanger moments in there. It's good to shake things up every once in a while. With the first two books, I kept a spreadsheet, so that I knew I had the right balance of Abby bits to Mark bits, superhero jokes to dating jokes, and so on. Achieving that perfect combination is something I work hard at.

Once I'm ready for a page, I actually do rough pencils in the shower. I find I get my best ideas in the shower, so I bought some shower crayons so I could write notes down on the wall when I'm so inspired. I'll do a thumbnail to break down the timing of the joke there.

I'm revising right up to the point where I'm lettering, and will generally change most lines of dialogue twice as I'm working on them. This isn't the case with everything, as there are some lines that are just exactly what I want, and I hang everything around it. The ending of the first book, where Abby says "Sweep me off my feet" was written before any of the book was even started. Everything else had to service that.

So, it's an amorphous process. It can take between 1-3 days to break a joke. By the end of the issue, though, I've been working on everything in my head for a while, so the last of the book comes faster.

TOS: Who has the strongest comedic "voice" of your characters (when writing the dialogue) and who is the hardest to pull off comedy with, given the nature of the character?

TZ: Charlotte, Abby's sister, is my favorite and the easiest to write. She can be unapologetically funny. With jokes between Mark and Abby, occasionally they can come off a little mean or condescending and I have to work to avoid it. If I need Abby to ask Mark what his weakness is, I need it to be done without sounding whiny or needy, and Mark's response can't be cruel. Charlotte, on the other hand, will say what she thinks is funny and deal with the fallout.

The hardest to write is a toss-up. Amazonia is the main culprit. She's the Wonder Woman-type character who used to date Mark/The Crusader. It seems as if she wants Mark back, but it is never, ever, explicitly said. Everything she does can be read on two levels. It has to play as if Abby is misinterpreting her, so that Mark never sees it as being a problem.

When Amazonia and Abby are comparing how they met Mark, Abby tells a story about meeting while he was doing her taxes, and Zoe says how she met him while she was strapped to the front of a missile. "Oh, but your story's cute, too" she assures Abby. She doesn't actually say anything bad, but yet it still is. Making sure to write something that works on both levels is a challenge.

The other one is Mark's Mom, who at this point has only appeared once. She's a similar thing, where everything she says comes out wrong. When Abby thanks her for understanding that Mark is spending Christmas with Abby's family, his Mom says "That's fine… this year." Abby hears only the disapproval and misses that his Mom is actually planning on them still dating next year.

TOS: In initially discussing Love and Capes, you mentioned to me that it's "done like Asterix and can be broken up to put on the website". Would you say Asterix is a narrative influence on the project, and if not could you elaborate on some of the comic book influences, as well as your comedy influences?

TZ: Asterix isn't an influence, just because I haven't read too much of it. It's a good descriptor, though. Just about every page of LNC 8 panels, with a payoff every fourth panel, so it can be sectioned up into web strips or other four-panel uses. It makes the book work decently when parts are posted on the web, and gives me a lot of flexibility to promote it. I used some four-panel segments as bookmarks at San Diego last year. It's a perfect little snippet to show off.

Asterix is syndicated as half-pages and then collected in giant trades where they work as a whole.

As far as comic book influences:

Darwyn Cooke is big one. I keep the Absolute New Frontier by my drawing table as a kind of bible. Cartoony, but not too cartoony, and very designy. Even the coloring (by Dave Stewart) is a big influence. By extension, the Bruce Timm DC Universe cartoons are a big influence, too. One of the best compliments on the series I got was someone who said that it was a cross between Cooke and Timm. I don't think I'm that good, but it's nice to hear.

Disney cartoons are a big influence, too. The art functions in an animated format, with vaguely painted backgrounds with colored holding lines, and characters on top of that.

Past that, Kurt Schaffenberger for his work on Shazam!, Captain Marvel, and his Supergirl and Lois Lane stories are mixed in there, too. And Carl Barks, for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the eight panel grid he worked so well.

As far as comedy:

Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Berke Breathed's Bloom County and Charles Schulz's Peanuts are huge comedy influences. Most of their strips used the four panel format. I try to read one of those collections between working on each book, just to keep that cadence in mind.

Aaron Sorkin is the biggest influence on my dialogue. His West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 are big faves with me. I love the way his characters talk, the words they use, and the cadence in which they use them. In a lot of ways, I think he's the Stan Lee of TV. Someone, and I wish I could remember who, said that Stan Lee didn't write the way people talked, he wrote the way people wished they talked. I think the same is true of Sorkin. No one actually talks like that, but man, don't you wish you could?

The Sorkin love is a double-edged sword, though. Banter is hard to do in comics, because of the format. Josh and Donna may have bounced back in forth as they walked down an aisle, but in comics the words take space, and there's no easy motion. So I try to get the feel across, without being one of those writers who give every conversational twitch its own balloon. I started out as a letterer, and too much copy is something I'm very sensitive to.

TOS: Do you see Love and Capes as a finite series, with an end clearly in sight--or could you see yourself doing comedy bits with these characters for many years to come?

TZ: That depends on response. I think I could do Love and Capes indefinitely, as they story just has so much potential. But, as a self-publisher, I have to be realistic. There's a certain amount of time and effort I can devote to it, but I have to balance things with other paying work and other clients. Right now, I'm working hard, hoping that things will break big. On the other hand, I can't promise 100 issues with things as they're set up.

Now, if some big publisher wants to talk about picking up Love and Capes, that might be different.

So, the structure I'm using is three six-issue cycles. That's eighteen issues, and at the rate I'm doing them, it'll be well over five years worth of material. It takes me about three months to put together an issue, as I do everything myself. I'm planning on taking a bit of a break after issue six. Because of the vagaries of my publishing schedule, I've had to get out three issues in six months, which is a little tight (Getting a Valentine's Day issue out after Christmas was less than three full months, and the Free Comic Book Day issue needed to be done a month earlier than a normal book.) I'm not burning out, but I am getting a little crispy at the edges.

I want to make sure the reader gets something satisfying with every cycle. Think of it like a TV season. The obvious idea is that they'd get married, and I'm throwing that out because that is NOT what happens at the end of issue six. The series is built on a healthy relationship, not any romantic tension like TV's Ross and Rachel or Sam and Diane, so if they're married or not, you've still got the same material to mine, with a few tweaks. Roger Stern made that point about Lois and Clark in the comics. "Of course they'll fight. He doesn't have any step ladders or oven mitts in the house."

So, to continue my TV analogies, I have the season finales for three seasons.. Whether I do five issues or fifteen or fifty before each of those big events, that I'm flexible on. If the readers want me, if there's enough support, I'll keep making more.

TOS: Do you think the popularity of a show like Heroes helps or hurts the potential of Love and Capes being developed for a sitcom?

TZ: Heroes probably helps. I think it shows people like the concept of superheroes, and will embrace it in large numbers. And, it might be a decent selling point to say "Okay, how about Heroes, but as a sitcom. Cheaper to produce." In fact, that's part of the structure I use for Love and Capes. The superhero stuff takes place, for the most part, off panel. We never see any big fights or anything.

On the other hand My Super Ex-Girlfriend probably hurt. I didn't see the movie, intentionally so, as I didn't want any idea bleed. I'm hoping it did badly enough that no one even thinks of it when LNC is pitched. I hears there's a Will Smith superhero movie in the works, where he's a her with a lot of problems. I don't get that. You can't find enough interest in a superhero dating someone that you have to add "and then they break up" or "and he's in therapy"?

I think the mistake a lot of my predecessors make is that they treat the superhero stuff for laughs, like the Tick (which I love, don't get me wrong) did. I'm treating Mark's superheroics the same way that any sitcom treats anyone else's job. Ross was a paleontologist on Friends. They used it as a source of jokes and humor, but they never treated it like it wasn't serious.

Basically, I'm writing the superhero scenes like it's the old Adventures of Superman. People were in danger, and bad things were happening. But the George Reeves Superman had such a calm, avuncular quality, that you knew it was all going to be okay.

TOS: How did issue 4 being part of Free Comic Book Day come about? Was it your idea?

TZ: I got the information from Diamond about FCBD, read through it, and said "Hey, issue four will be out at the same time. Why not tie them in?" So it wasn't a big lightning bolt moment, just a confluence of events. I did make a Spider-Man movie type of joke on the cover of #4, so there's a vague tie-in. And, as I mentioned before, I do a lot of other artwork for different outlets, so switching LNC #4 to a break-even model, as Free Comic Book Day books are, was a fine fit.

I think it's going to do really well.

TOS: How much has having a strong online presence seemed to help garner more attraction for your work?

TZ: It's hard to say. I think it has, especially in my presence on some profession groups where I could promote the book. I made free copies of the first issue available to retailers before I even solicited it, and that helped get a lot more exposure.

I used to work at an ad agency, and still dabble in ad work from time to time. One of the stories we were told is that a business had a response card asking where people heard about the business. A large number of people checked TV, but the thing was, the business never advertised on television. So, the same way, I try to make sure LNC is out there as much as I can. If someone orders because of the online preview or because I passed out free copies to people waiting in line for Joss Whedon at San Diego or because I did a radio interview, the more omnipresent I am, the better it is.

Having said all that, the website and its related previews are a great help. I just can't track exactly how good a help they are.

TOS: Is there any ground I did not cover that you would like to discuss?

TZ: Well, I do want to point out that LNC#4 will feature a contest, based on DC's 1980s version of Dial H For Hero, where they solicited heroes and villains from the readership. In fact, I was one of the people who had a character in it. (Any-Body in Superboy #35, if you're interested.) So, I'm going to run something similar so that people can get a character in #5, and they'll get some prizes for it. The name of the contest, and the exact specifics are still to be worked out.

The other thing is that the book is all-ages friendly. It's not written for kids, per se, but there's nothing they can't see. There have been a few comic writers out there who have gotten kind of explicit with some of the superhero sex stuff. That's fine, but I'm not doing that in this book.

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