Sean McKeever TalksBy Park Cooper Sean McKeever could be described as a renaissance man of comics, his talents are so many and varied. But surely such a description would be a disservice of sorts, for his aptitude for things technological is apparent to even the most casual observer who surfs into SeanMcKeever.com. McKeever is the writer of The Waiting Place which he describes as “A slice-of-life series about growing up in a dead end town.” Like it’s author, the series defies a simple description…
 Park Cooper: Well, any opening comments, or shall I begin?
Sean McKeever: Nope. Go ahead. Fire away.
PC: Tell me a bit about yourself... I know you're from Wisconsin... when were you born, what are your influences, favorite book, favorite movie, favorite music, how you got into making a comic...
Heh, I realize that's a big opening blast...
SMK: No shit! You know how to open it up! [smiles]
I'm 28 now, so I guess I was born in '72, in Appleton. Lived in the Milwaukee 'burbs until '79 and then went up north, where I spent 20-some years of my life.
PC: That explains some of the music tastes I've noticed...
SMK: I got into comics early on. I learned to read at an early age from reading Spider-Man comics, so I've always been a big fan of the ol' webspinner.
SMK: Oh, you mean my interest in angst-ridden, aggressive music?
PC: Um... well my younger cousins wouldn't know London's Calling if it walked up and hit them in the head with a huge sign reading "Hello, I'm London's Calling."
SMK: Neither would I, actually. Uh...kidding.
Anyway, when you grow up in a small town, like I did, and you don't fit in, there's very little chance of you finding ANYONE with your differences to bond with. So I spent a lot of time alone, which helped my creativity grow, I guess.
PC: Yep. I've been to Suring, Wisconsin.
SMK: Suring is one of many sad, little places in WI. But I like it there in a sappy, sentimental sort of way.
PC: I dig ya. I heard you did some plays... Did you see RUSHMORE?
SMK: Oh, Christ on a stick - RUSHMORE was brilliant! "I wrote and directed a hit play!"
SMK: Yeah, I wrote a lot of plays in grade school. Directed 'em. Casted 'em. Starred in 'em. I was Max Fischer without the intellect, or at least without an interest in using my intellect.
PC: Why no interest?
SMK: It was fun for me to get good grades, but once I got into 7th grade or so, it became work, so I skated by. Lack of focus, maybe? I don't know why. I've never really thought about it much. I think my focus in that regard turned to acting, where I found a great outlet for my creativity, and I won a few accolades for it, too.
PC: My wife says "Tell him I grew up in small town in MN, so God bless 'im."
SMK:[laughs]
PC: And these are some feelings that are coming through in Waiting Place... I just got #4 this week...
 SMK: Yeah, #4 deals with that issue of loneliness. I always have this panel--a final panel for a story--in my head, where 30 people are walking through a mall, and they all have the same thought balloon: "I am so alone."
PC: Would you say that working with the medium of drama helped you later with things like dialogue, pacing and the rest?
SMK: Yes, it definitely helped. I have an instinctual feel for pacing and dialogue that comes from it.
PC: I asked that because you know, I feel that it shows from your work. So then... what/whom might your influences be?
SMK: In terms of storytelling, my influences would be JM DeMatteis, Spielberg, Paul Jenkins...damn, I'm drawing a total blank. There are a lot of comics writers, some directors and a few novelists who inspire me and from whom I learn. It's hard for me to spill out a list, 'cause I'm never really asking myself "who influences the way I write?" But maybe I should.
PC: Yeah, I've often appreciated DeMatteis's work... What by Jenkins? Hellblazer fan perchance?
SMK: Jenkins, as well as being a brilliant writer, got me my first pro gig in comics.
PC: Really? Wow, how'd that happen?
SMK: We met on CompuServe, back when it was the happening place to be. We sort of became friends, and he'd read my work and bleed the shit out of it, 'cause he felt I had potential. He wound up hooking me up with Joe Pruett over at Caliber and I got a few short stories in Negative Burn.
PC: Can you think of any of the novelists?
SMK: As a kid, I was a big reader of Stephen King, an influence that I guarantee will reveal itself eventually, if I'm allowed to write what I want. As far as other authors, there weren't many I followed. I remember reading some VC Andrews, some Mary Higgins Clark...mostly suspense/horror.
PC: Well then... Fave book? Fave movie? Fave music?
SMK: Favorite book: Different Seasons. Favorite movie: always changing, but USUAL SUSPECTS is right up there. FIGHT CLUB is a current fave, too. As far as music, I'm into the electronica / industrial / modern rock stuff. NIN, KMFDM, Underworld, Bjork, Creeper Lagoon - loads of music I like to listen to.
PC: Yes, there were the Bjork and NIN references in #4... Well more like a Bjork shout than a 'reference'.
SMK: Yeah, I sneak in references to pop culture I dig wherever I can. I let Mike Norton do some of that too. [Bjork's] Hyper-Ballad is a great track. I love the way it swings from a soft, peaceful song into a fantastic club track and back into mellow.
PC: To what degree are you writing 'what you want' now? Some? Slightly? Mostly?
SMK: Right now, with THE WAITING PLACE, I'm kinda-sorta writing what I want. I enjoy it, but I see myself writing other stories and other genres down the line.
PC: What can you tell me about working with Mike Norton?
SMK: Mike is terrific. He's amazing to work with. I was lucky to find him before he got snatched up by the big companies somewhere. He was doing work at Image, you know? What was he doing with this Indy slice-of-life book?
PC: How DID you find him? I suppose I just thought SLG found him for you...
SMK: No, SLG doesn't do the artist-writer dating service. Most publishers don't, really.
PC: Too bad.
SMK: I had a sort of talent search on my Web site.
 PC: For anyone who might wonder what "layouts" means , what does David Yurkovich do exactly?
SMK: David takes my full scripts and breaks down the panels and angles on the page--rough sketching, basically - and Mike uses those to pencil & ink & letter & (now) computer color the page.
PC: Tell me about working with Slave Labor.
SMK: I like working with SLG. I referred to them earlier today as "wonderfully stubborn".
SMK: Dan Vado and his crew are fighting an uphill battle, as any small-press publisher does, and it amazes me that they stick with it. They'll stick with books that maybe aren't making them money because they believe in the material, and hope to help it get to the point where it does make money.
SMK: That's a real love for comics. Or a death wish.
PC: Yeah, I have respect for SLG.
PC: Let's talk about the high-school experience. Speaking of drive-by shootings, what are your thoughts on guns and schools in America today?
SMK: Oh, shit - there's a can of worms!
PC: Don't have to open it if you don't want to...
SMK: No, that's fine.
SMK: You know, I really felt for those two dumb kids in CO, because even though on some levels I was "popular" in the dictionary sense (well-known), I was very alienated. But in the end, they were two brain-dead idiots who did something completely awful.
I'd hate to be a student or a teacher now. I'd especially hate to be a student who likes to wear black, or listens to industrial/goth music. Those poor kids have it even worse now because people only like to scratch the surface of the problem and create scapegoats. It's much easier for them.
PC: Warren Ellis seems interested in Columbine, I've noticed... probably because it's final evidence that all Americans have guns all over the place.
SMK: Ha! My parents owned a sporting goods store, and I sold a lot of guns... Don't own one myself. Shot one a few times, but it never really interested me.
PC: Did you happen to read the article in Newsweek where they interviewed the students at Columbine? They said the two guys were gay, that they were into dabbling with black witchcraft... I don't know anything about those guys, but I doubt they were into witchcraft, and I really doubt they were gay witches...
PC: Talk about alienation.
SMK: Yeah, those kids saying that shit is part of the problem. One jock said something like, "they were faggy and we didn't want 'em around so we made fun of 'em".
PC: Yeah. Now, those people certainly didn't deserve what they got, but that confirmed for me that they also didn't understand that these guys didn't just wake up one day and decide they hated everyone...
SMK: And Newsweek didn't really comment on the shocking nature of that quote, which was even more shocking - as if they thought that was - and should be - status quo.
PC: EXACTLY. Just reported it like "here's the facts, folks."
SMK: Yes! And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have those "the school's dead" fantasies. That's what goes on in your head when you're ridiculed and mercilessly hurt emotionally by these people. The difference being that I wasn't so maladjusted as to actually go through with it.
PC: What is that that the class is reading in issue one of volume two? I have a guess but I suspect I'm wrong...
SMK: They're reading Our Town.
PC: Hah. I thought it was Our Town. Easy to say after you've said so, but it's true.
SMK: That was Jeff Limke's idea. He's not only my consulting editor, he's an English teacher.
PC: I'm an English teacher myself.
PC: Any comment on the whole thing with the racists in that same issue of Waiting Place?
SMK: Not really anything to comment. I actually treat racism rather tamely in TWP compared to what it was in some circles in WI. It's an ongoing problem in society, and I felt like tackling that, but by showing it rather than commenting directly on it.
I'm more interested now in telling stories about Cullen being Cullen than about Cullen being black. I think playing the gay and racism cards in vol. 1 were rookie mistakes, in a way.
 PC: Okay, then I've got to skip ahead to a question I'd planned to ask later about issue #4... WHY did Lora smile when she passed the girls who were saying mean things about her?
SMK: I have the answer, but I don't know that I want to give it. Why do you think she smiled?
PC: Well should I take a shot? You really want me to?
SMK: Sure.
PC: Well the obvious bit would be that, well, she's obviously heard. So anything else would show that they've hurt her... it's sort of a matter of personal honor...
PC: But...
PC: I'd like to take it as a possible sign that she's ACTUALLY learning, on the inside, to not care what her sucky peers think. I mean, she didn't break down and cry when she got out of their sight or anything, that we saw...
PC: And we all know that that quality of not caring is easier the closer one gets to graduating HS...
PC: So I'd like to think that it was more than just an external mask, that smile.
Comments?
SMK: Interesting answers. I'm still deciding if I should be the type of writer who lets people have and keep their own interpretations instead of spelling things out and "ruining" it for people.
PC: I like Lora... Any thoughts on writing female characters? This is a big ongoing discussion between my wife and I; we're always on the lookout for males who can write female characters, too...
SMK: I think the trick is writing about a person first, gender aside. It's also the ability to get into a person's skin on an empathic level, you know? That comes from my interest as an actor.
PC: I can dig that.
Would you say any of these characters are like people you've ever met in real life? Certainly that seems true of the emotional situations... Based on what you've said...
SMK: A few of them - Jeremy, Juston and Chris - are real people.
PC: Wow.
SMK: Other than that, a lot of people say I'm Scott. Some say I'm Jeffry. I think it's just easy for them to say that because they're the main guys, and I write what I know, so they seem similar to me, I guess.
PC: I love the ending of #4... But... Isn't it a little, well, bad, that this guy is reading the diary? Have we ever met him before?
SMK: We haven't met the guy before, and we probably never will again. Outside of the ongoing issues in Lora's life, that story ended when he put the diary back into the locker, and then made his decision at the end--and no, I won't tell you if he said anything.
PC: That answers another burning question I had... Was this chapter going to turn into some sort of relationship later, I mean, am I correct in thinking that Lora didn't even see who whispered? Or would these two meet and talk at some point in future?
SMK: He reads it but he knows exactly where she's coming from, you know? So he does the decent thing.
 PC: I changed my mind quite a bit by the end, but at first I was like "gasp, this guy's gonna read poor Lora's diary..."
SMK: No. I really set the character up as the Everyman. "Just another student."
PC: Heh... I was afraid he was putting it into his OWN locker until I noticed the Powerpuff Girl.
SMK: Well, that COULD'VE been his locker with the Powerpuff Girls--though he'd've gotten his ass kicked a lot for it.
PC: Heh. Another question: Is it meant to say something symbolic that this guy is for a while reading the diary in an otherwise totally empty theater/auditorium?
SMK: You know, I think it is symbolic, though it wasn't conscious. You just made me realize something about my writing. That happens a lot. Much of my writing is still so instinctual.
SMK: He's an audience of one. And the lights are down, because the "performer" thinks no one cares to watch.
PC: Yeah.
Are details like the paint and plaster peeling off the buildings downtown something you write in yourself, or are photo references used of someplace, or...?
SMK: That's mostly Mike. Sometimes, I'll get rather specific with the details, but never to any degree like Alan Moore. Have you seen his scripts?
PC: I saw, like, one panel of Miracleman once... it was like a page long of description... and I'm not sure that was the whole panel description, either.
SMK: Yeah. I'll probably never write like that. My panels vary from 1 sentence to 2 paragraphs, depending. I'll get into angles and panel sizes, but I'm mostly trying to convey emotion, and the still-frame at which we catch these characters.
PC: How did you learn to do a comics-style script? I started out copying Neil's "Calliope" in the TPB...
I wonder how many other people bought it cause it had a sample of a real comics script...
SMK: I can't remember how I saw my first script. Oh, wait - I bought a newsprint "manual" on writing comics around '91. Then I got a hold of Busiek's Marvels script, and Neil's Sandman scripts from the one TPB.
PC: I noticed that the scene with Lora and "subject" was all these 8-panel pages...
SMK: The eight-panel grid is great, and a favorite choice of David's. See, up until issue #6, I'd been writing in a loose full-script format. Basically, the only difference is I didn't use panel numbers, the reason being that when I handed David the full script of #1, 5-panel pages became 8-panel pages, and 7-panel pages became 10-panel pages. And I loved what he was doing!
PC: Yes, it's quite effective.
SMK: But now I feel the need to get back into full scripting proper, so I'm doing that again, which feels good. But it's tough for a "talking heads" comic.
PC: I also noticed the black pages in #4 as opposed to the white pages of #1.
SMK: And with the black pages, that's all Mike, and I love him for it. It looks great. Adds texture and weight.
PC: Well.... plans for the future?
 SMK: Right now I'm just plugging away at TWP, hoping to get ahead on it so I can pitch some other stuff. I've got a few great artists who'd like to work with me, and I'd like to start pitching to the superhero people, 'cause I like the genre and its page rates.
PC: How do you feel about the industry currently? Do you feel that we need to edge away from superheroes? Or do you love em as much as the next guy?
SMK: I think, yes, we need to edge away from superheroes, but only because it controls 80-90% of the marketplace, and when one genre controls that much, it's bad for business in the long term.
PC: Nicely said.
SMK: I think superheroes can be great, but they ain't everything. I think Steven Grant said that it's like if the movie Industry were dominated by westerns. I mean, how silly is that?
PC: Well bud, that's about all I've got... any final thoughts?
SMK: I hope people ask their retailers for TWP by name, or preorder it. They're welcome to check out the info I have at my site, and e-mail me with any questions.
PC: Sounds good.
SMK: Thanks much, Park.
PC: Hey no, thank you.
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