[heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Ryan Cady.

Ryan, welcome to "Comic Culture."

- Thank you, Terence, it's a pleasure to be here.

- So Ryan, you have come up with a new series called "Haunt You to the End," which is coming out from Image, the Imprint Top Cow, and it is a post-apocalyptic, yet not quite the post-apocalyptic monster search that we would be expecting.

So can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this story?

- Yeah, it is kind of dicey.

I've been trying to be like, "Well, is it mid-apocalyptic, or pre-apocalyptic?"

I haven't quite figured out the prefix there.

You know, honestly, it's set during a sort of slow, truncated version of the climate apocalypse that we could be facing.

And you know, I know a lot of people, you know, a lot of my friends and people just out there in the media, that sort of, there's a lot of conversation about like, "The apocalypse is so slow and boring these days.

The end of the world that we're experiencing is gonna take hundreds of hundreds of year."

I'm not necessarily that doom and gloom about it myself, but I sort of recognize that sort of perspective on this slow sort of like day after tomorrow, but taking hundreds of years and decades.

So I kind of wanted to explore that a lot.

And I'm fascinated by death, life after death, if it exists, that sort of thing, and the idea of like trying to prove it, and if you could find ghosts scientifically.

So kinda wanted to explore that a little.

- And it's interesting, because as we look at science fiction or horror, it's always a good way to tell a story about contemporary times.

And I'm thinking back to let's say "Star Trek," where the future in those episodes was always so bright, the colors were always so bright, because I guess in the 60s, things looked a little bit more positive than they do now.

And I know with contemporary writers, they might have a little bit more doom and gloom.

But what I find really fascinating is the way that you're, I guess, incorporating contemporary media trends.

So there's a social media influencer reporter character who's going out on this mission, with, I guess, a ghost hunter.

So I was wondering, you know, as you are looking at the world around you, and kinda putting this together, are you looking at those classic tropes, and combining it with sort of a modern sensibility?

Or are you just kind of like, "This is a great story, I'm just gonna go with what's popping into my head right now?"

- You know, definitely I try to be a little column A, a little column B, but thank you for bringing up the journalist.

Matt Park is his name, and yeah, you know, I did a little bit of journalism when I was younger, and I have a lot of friends who are working in, you know, contemporary media, and I kind of wanted to explore the more modern version of what a contemporary media journalist looks like.

You know, if I was writing this book decades ago, it would be, you know, like an intrepid reporter, or like a, you know, someone really finding the case, or like really heroic and solving things.

And you know, most of the people I know working in media are bit doom and gloom about it and downtrodden, and they're not giving up certainly, but there is sort of like a bleakness about, you know, what is our profession, and how does it work in the age of mass communication, and what's that gonna look like going forward, you know?

And so with this guy Matt Park, I wanted him to be kind of like, well, how tired and exhausted do you get after going through the ringer of trying to be a personality, as well as a journalist, and what kind of stories you get to write in a sort of what the future will look like decades from now?

And it is a little bleak, but again, I do think hopefully there's some optimism there.

- It feels like everything is very contemporary, but you can see that there's that, I guess, the fictional elements that are woven into it.

And I'm just thinking back to the opening scene, where we're kind of, we know we're in Hollywood, because we see the, you know, the Hollywood stars, the Walk of Fame, and that comes back later on in another scene.

As you start to look at the world around you, do you kind of wonder like what Hollywood would look like once it's uninhabitable?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I live in LA, so I'm kind of down there, and we've had some pretty crazy weather lately.

So there is sort of a, like, "Is this gonna be here in the future?"

That opening scene, speaking of sort of contemporary stuff, you know, because one of our main characters is a, you know, a multi-billionaire, an oligarch you might say, and he is sort of Callum Shah, he's a British Pakistani tech billionaire sort of funding this expedition.

And I, you know, I kinda looked at like, "Well, what do the ultra-rich do today?"

Like, what are their sort of hobbies, or trendy things to do?

You know, there's like the mission to Mars, or what have you.

And then we look in the past, like, "What did the ultra rich do?"

Built libraries or whatever.

And I was like, "Well, in a world where, you know, so much of contemporary, you know, cities and culture and areas have been ruined by climate change, I like to imagine these people who have this money and funds, you know, sort of being able to go explore those areas again."

So the idea was like, you know, an exca-vacation, like an excavator, and the idea of like, "Well, what would this this ghost hunter guy go do?

Well, he'd probably wanna go, and lots of people would go dig up stars on the Walk of Fame for their favorite celebrities of yore," and so I went with Vincent Price, 'cause I wanted someone appropriately ghostly.

But I don't know, I don't think that's too far afield from what people might be doing, assuming the world is still here.

- It's true because I know that there is that celebrity mindset that people do want anything from a celebrity.

So I'm sure if they were a, you know, a climate apocalypse, somebody's going to have an Elvis suit somewhere in their bunkers.

- [laughing] Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I, you know, obviously this book is about ghosts and ghosts, and this sort of one particular billionaire's obsession.

But yeah, I like to imagine the whole different varieties of people obsessed with stuff, somebody with Elvis stuff, somebody just with neon signs, you know, anything of the yore.

- And it's fascinating too, because towards the end of the first issue, you have the classic, I mean, this happens in every story.

Just when things seem to be under control, something happens, and what you thought you were going to be able to do changes, to the point where you don't know if you're going to get back alive.

So you set up this cliffhanger going into the second issue, and it just, again, you don't know if there's something real there, or if it's something that's just, you know, like Geraldo and his vault, for the younger viewers out there, that's a real topical reference.

- [laughing] Definitely.

I mean, I think that's, and thank you, I think that's what's hopefully really cool to play with both the is this, "Oh, we are meddling in forces that we cannot comprehend," like have I, have these characters, you know, through their wealth or resources, assumed that, you know, they can examine and control and explore all these things?

Or is it simply perhaps more depressing, the, "Oh, have we just wasted all of it?"

Like, is this, do we not have any idea?

This is just throwing money out the door, all these resources trying to make this thing happen.

It's just, "Oh no, we're just, we're trapped, and there's danger, and we don't know what's happening."

So two different rock and a hard place, I suppose, but I wanna explore both.

- Before coming to Image, you had worked for other publishers, including DC Comics, and I'm just wondering what is it about a publisher, like Image, and Imprint like Top Cow, that makes you wanna bring your IP to them to get the story out to audiences?

- Well, for starters, you know, the Top Cow team is small but dedicated, and you know, through Image traditionally, you know, you're sort of on your own, right?

As a creator, you're just sort of, you know, working with your collaborators, putting your book together, and yeah, they do this back and forth with Image Central, obviously, and they're, you know, they're a helpful, great publisher, and they're there for you.

But they're, in a way, the setup in a lot of it, they're sort of just setting you out there.

And whereas Top Cow, you know, you kind of have a team behind you, you have people you can help work with, and sort of carry it to that point.

And for me, I actually interned at Top Cow when I was in college, and you know, I've always felt like really close to that team.

I've worked with them a few times over the years, and I just feel like, you know, obviously this is coming from my perspective, 'cause I know everyone there, and I know those people, I know how that company runs.

But I feel very strongly that, you know, they're passionate about the books they put out, they work hard on them, and they don't, you know, they don't green light a title, unless they're all really feeling intrigued and optimistic about it.

And that's something you can't always find in the landscape of comics today, which is often sometimes kind of mercenary, or you're really struggling to find whatever outlet you can for your books.

- And I know Matt Hawkins, I've had him on the show, he is one of those forward thinkers.

He's always looking for the next trend, the next big idea.

He tends to, he was saying that, you know, he's a big fan of science, and he'll be reading a lot of science books, and then try and incorporate that maybe into a story that he's working.

And I'm just thinking about a recent book that I know that you had collaborated on, which was called "A.R.C.," again with a journalist, Paul Feinstein, who is writing about the horrors of poaching, of human trafficking, of child soldiers, and making it, again, using the lens of fiction to make it more palatable for modern audiences to examine an issue.

So how do you get involved in that, because again, it's another journalist that you're working with, to sort of help them refine their story, so to take on a role of a mentor in your own right?

- It's funny that you talk about Matt being a forward thinker, and always diving into science, 'cause especially on "A.R.C.," he kind of, middleman is the wrong word, but he's like a filter for all of the horrible facts that, you know, we had to incorporate.

You know, Paul coming from his perspective as a travel writer, and being passionate about all these horrible things that are going on, and being able to bring that information, and also bring this sort of story to us.

And then Matt sort of being kind of a, more like a scientist writer, being sort of like, "Okay, well, here's this horrible factoid, and we should really dive into this horrible factoid," and this sort of thing.

And it's the kind of thing that I could see a lot of publishers kind of shying away from, or perhaps wanting to clean up a little bit.

And again, it's not that "A.R.C."

is like an all doom and gloom story, but it is brutal, and it doesn't shy away from the realities of that trade, the sort of, I think Paul may have talked about it a few times, and Matt talks about that sort of triangle of poaching, and warlords, and billionaires that fund in, and well, wealthy people that are sort of allowing that trade to happen.

And I think what I really like about Matt's perspective in general is that, you know, he wouldn't wanna shy away from the realities, you know, the facts need to be there.

Although he is, of course, still open to fiction, because obviously, my book's about ghosts.

[laughing] - Well, it is true, ghosts aren't quite scientifically proven yet, but, you know, we have a few more weeks we can figure that out.

[Ryan laughing] But you've written, again, more of these supernatural, and kind of other forms of entertainment in traditionally what most people think of comics as being super heroics.

So when you are working for someone like DC, how do you sort of get your sensibilities into a character that is a legacy character, that, you know, people have an expectation of what, let's say a Batman might do, versus what your characters in your own stories might do?

- You know, I mean, that's always the difficulty of the game, but I find that challenge really invigorating personally.

I really like the opportunity to find sort of these modern mythology superhero figures, and find a way to be like, "Well, what can I connect to?

Or what can a character I like connect to?"

Last year I did some "Green Lantern" stories, actually might have been two years ago, time flies these days, about Jessica Cruz, the Green Lantern.

And we actually had her, is gonna be maybe inside baseball, for people who aren't DC heads, but we made her a yellow lantern, and had her sort of working with the, you know, green lanterns are willpower, yellow lanterns are sort of fear power.

And I really wanted to explore fear, like not as a villainous angle, but explore what it means to have anxiety, to struggle through, you know, fears and apprehension, and how you can explore that, sometimes exploit that, but not use that against people.

But you know, fear, anxiety, there's kind of empathy machine there.

And I really wanted to find a way to explore that aspect of a character, or that aspect of a power, rather than just sort of being like, you know, "This is the way it's always been, this is the way it'll be."

Or the converse, where I'm like, "Well, I really like this, so I'm just gonna write 'em this way, I don't really care."

You know, really kinda trying to marry that, or find as much of myself, or my values, or my interests.

- As somebody who is older than you, unless of course you are remarkably well preserved, it's interesting to see the approach that modern younger writers are taking with these heroic archetypes.

Whereas when I was growing up, you had the folks who may have fought in World War II, and maybe some baby boomers who were getting into comics, writing comics, now seeing the millennials, and the Gen Z, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, with their sensibilities being put into comics.

It's just interesting.

So as you look back at the comics that maybe you grew up reading, compared to the comics that you're writing now, what similarities do you see, and what changes do you see coming from, you know, your cohorts?

- You know, as a, I guess a millennial I suppose, you know, I think that there are through lines there that we see recurring in the industry, right?

I think, you know, there's always sort of, you know, social justice aspects being explored from the beginning of this industry to now.

I know that it's more of a hot-button issue to talk about creator sort of injecting their politics, but I don't know, I sort of see that as cyclical, and I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush here, but like if you say, you know, "The comics I grew up on reading," or the comics that were, you know, popular from the generation right before mine, we look a lot of Gen X stuff, or a lot of sort of the 90s boom era, where there are a lot of great comics, and a lot of people might be like, "Oh, well, they were flashier, or they weren't about examining social things."

But I do think they were just, they were reflective of the culture at the time, and sort of like, in the same way that comics are now, as you said.

You know, I think a lot of my contemporaries are interested in exploring philosophical stuff, and social stuff, and those ideas, but I think they've always been a factor.

And I do think at the core, there is sort of just this idea of, you know, of putting character first maybe, that, I'm not gonna say wasn't a factor in earlier generations.

I think you can see it, you know, it's sort of, if we trend perhaps towards, you know, which is more desired among the readers, is this a time where we really wanna do character-focused stories, or is this a time when we wanna do, you know, sensational, bombastic, not necessarily action packed, but like, you know, plot-focused things?

Or are we into heady high concepts?

You know, I think it's more about, you know, seeing these trends as they go on, and who latches on to what, if that makes sense.

- Absolutely, and again, it fascinates me that there's a divide between generations and comics, which to me seems silly, because story should be story, and we should be able to enjoy it on its own merits, rather than say, you know, "Get off my lawn," and shake our fist at clouds.

Let's talk about collaboration on "Haunt You to the End," you are working with an artist, and I'm just wondering how you are doing this?

Is this something where you create a full script, and maybe Matt is helping you pick an artist?

Or is it something where you are talking with somebody with the hope of, you know, coming up with a story to work on together?

- Well, this artist, Andrea Mutti and I, we put together a previous Top Cow Image book, "Infinite Dark."

And so this time around, it's been a lot more like we're old hat at this, we kind of know each other's peccadilloes, and like tendencies, and what we like, and what we are good or bad at, but that's all stuff that we had to learn on our first round through.

So when we did "Infinite Dark," you know, I had sent Matt a few pitches over the years, and "Infinite Dark" was one he liked.

It's more science-based, it takes place after the end of the universe, it has a lot of entropy, thermodynamic stuff going on.

And Andrea was just like, you know, he's done a lot of books over the years, worked at a lot of places, he's a really established guy, and he had just sort of, it sort of worked out around the time that I was pitching this book to Matt, Andrea had been like, "Hey, I'd love to work on a Top Cow book," to Matt, and Matt was like, "Let's put these two together."

You know, every script is different, every collaboration is different.

I try to approach script writing from like a collaborative process in the sense that like, "I'm writing this script for the artist," you know, like it's a conversation between me and him.

So like, yeah you know, hopefully it is discernible, and the kind of thing that anyone could pick up and comprehend or read, you know, like hopefully if Matt's gonna read it, and check it over, he is not gonna hate it.

The other people at Top Cow are gonna check it over and get it.

But ultimately, I'm writing it for Andrea, 'cause I want him to understand what I'm trying to convey, and I want us to have that back and forth.

And hopefully I, you know, I try to achieve that with all my work, even the for-hire stuff, like superhero stuff, obviously you're writing a lot more for the editor, and you want their input, and want to get what they're going for.

But I still really want it to feel like, "Hey, I'm talking to you, we're working together," you know, like we're in a room hopefully.

- See, I've been hosting this show for about 10 years now, and this is the first time someone phrased the collaboration process as, "I'm writing a script, it's a conversation with the artist," and people have said they make phone calls, or we email back and forth, but it's the first time it's put in that way.

So, you know, if you're tailoring the script for an editor, obviously it's going to be different than tailoring the script for Andrea to work on.

So, you know, when you are coming up with this, are you kind of maybe pushing him in a direction of like, "The art should be reminiscent of," or are you just trusting him to come up with the visuals, and you know, knock it outta the park?

- Definitely a little bit of both.

You know, on "Infinite Dark," 'cause it was our first time together, I was probably a lot more like, "Oh, and I really picture this sequence like, you know, such-and-such book from blank Grant Morrison title," or, you know, "I picture this a lot like, you know, this more recent Image book," or whatever, and kind of trying to reference stuff like that.

But as we've kind of, you know, we get each other more, I'm sort of trying to be like, "Hey, I know you do that thing," blank, or, "I know you like X kind of panels, so do that thing you do, you know, normally."

Although, you know, of course I'm definitely sending reference, you know.

We have a character in "Haunt You to the End," Gersh, who is like our military contractor lady.

And I was like, "Hey," like, "it's kind of something kinda like Linda Hamilton, in 'Terminator: Dark Fate,'" or you know, other characters, or for Callum Shah, the billionaire, I'm like, "Hey, you know, he's probably a millennial, but he's in his, you know, he's in his 80s, you know, like, let's try and expand on what that fashion would look like going forward.

So here's some ways some people dress, can you kind of modify this to, you know, forward think it a little bit, and inject that in there?"

But you know, especially with this book, Andrea, in the time since we've done "Infinite Dark," he's sort of moved to like a really interesting watercolor washed out style.

His books that, some of his books at Dark Horse and AfterShock and other places, really have this sort of moody, muddy feel to them.

And when we started working on this, I was like, "Hey, like lean into that.

Like this book should look like if there's not a storm going on, there's one about to go on, or there's, you know, there's always weird weather.

I want it to look dreary and scary and gloomy."

- And it's true, looking at the first issue, the contrast between light and dark is very, I mean, it just goes from light to dark so abruptly, and there's a lot of shadow, a very noir style in there.

So when you are able to lean on an artist like that, when you're able to kind of use their strength to help you with the storytelling, how does that sort of let you do a little bit more?

And maybe you're going to change some dialogue, or exclude some dialogue, just because the art is so expressive?

- Honestly, yeah, the ideally is when I get art back, I can be like, "Oh man, I can cut this line, and this line, and this line."

You know, I know, I think on your show before, and on a lot of things, you know, writers have talked about the difference between screenplays and comic scripting, and that sort of thing, and you know, a lot of screenplays are obviously more dialogue focused.

You know, my writing is less dialogue front.

I'm always trying to have as little dialogue as possible.

I'm sure I'm failing across the board, but nothing makes me feel better than when I've sent in a script, and I've been kind of like agonizing over it, being like, "Oh, I feel like this is a little wordy.

I don't know, I don't know."

And then, you know, I get a page back, and I'm like, "Oh, he's perfectly conveyed the ideas.

I can cut these lines, and these lines, and it can just speak for itself."

Or you know, rather I can cut out two meaningless lines, and have this really important line, just have that wvoomph.

So hopefully that sort of cinematographer screenwriter balance, I guess.

- In a way, you are trusting a large portion of the storytelling to an artist, and obviously the storytelling is something that a great artist is able to do, and do in a way that exceeds the words.

So when you're blown away by something, and you're able to trim things down, how does that sort of help you with the next project, where you might get a little bit of a better idea of what you could do with, you know, maybe another artist, or maybe a few less words here, and let the image kind of breathe?

- Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it, honestly, that there's, when you were kind of asking that question, I'm like, "Oh, it is kinda like a wet stone, you know, like sharpening each other on ourselves," and like yeah, I mean I think I'm growing with every project.

I mean, and even honestly, so you talk about that first issue of "Haunt You to the End," you know, I wrote that first issue a while ago, right?

'Cause it was, you know, early days when we've been building.

And there were even times, as we were going through different drafts of that, I'm like, "You know, now that I'm working on issue two, I probably would've cut that line," or, "Now that I see how Andrea renders this character, I probably wouldn't have even put that in there."

And it's just like little things like that to sort of, like you said, not only make me feel better about my craft, or learn things, but also feel better about this collaboration, and move towards like a more cohesive storytelling process.

- And I see we have about three minutes left in our conversation.

I just wanted to bring up, you know, this is, again, we don't know where along the apocalyptic scale this is, post, pre, or in the middle of it.

So as you're sort of designing this world in words, you know, what sort of tips are you giving to Andrea to you know, there's I think one scene where we see that there's tents over something, and I don't know if it's like a settlement, or if it's a dig site, but it just seems like it's new stuff over stuff that's old and decaying.

So how are you kind of coming up with those concepts?

- That scene, I think, oh, you're probably gonna talk about the same one.

But, you know, a lot of it was like, you know, I tried to think about, "Okay, well, you know, if coasts aren't gonna be usable, like what's a good airport to pick?"

Like, we don't wanna show LAX, 'cause LA's gone, New York is definitely sunk, so we don't wanna show JFK or LaGuardia, and who wants to fly out either of those?

So I was like, "Oh, let's pick Denver."

And as we were looking through reference, I was like, "Well, you know, Denver's international airport is like very far away from the city."

And he was like, sort of like doing that.

And I'm like, "Well, decades have passed, and people are living in different places.

I want, you should probably put a city there, you know, it should be near the city, not on the outskirts."

And like things like, oh, you know, if we look at how housing looks now, I'm like, "Well, he should probably be in a really a smaller crappier cramped apartment," or you know, take this design from this city, or this culture, and look at how that culture's trending in growth in general, and be like, "Yeah, all things are gonna look like this, or that apartment."

And so it's a combination of reference, and then also a combination of like, every once in a while I'll be like, "Hey, you know, here's what supply transport planes look like right now.

It's only been a few decades.

I don't think they should look that different.

But, you know, keeping in mind weather, and growth and changes in technology, what do you think it should look like, Andrea?

Like what do you think maybe new things should be incorporated?"

So again, hopefully, ideally it's that collaboration.

- So Ryan, if the folks at home wanted to find out more about you on the web, where can they see you?

- I am active on Twitter, as long as it still exists @RyCady.

My Instagram also is @RY _Cady, and that's a good place to find me.

I have a website, ryancadywrites.com.

I apologize if I haven't updated it in a while, but I will get on that for you fine folks at home.

And other than that, I'm out there in the world, find me at a comic shop near you.

- Well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a fun half hour.

- No, thank you Terence, this was a blast.

- Thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

[heroic music] ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

[triumphant music continues]