Alex de Campi: Irons In The Fire
By Craig Lemon

Alexandra de Campi is a relatively new name in the field of comics writing, but is destined to explode into our consciousness with four projects in 2004. First up is a five-page short story with Paul Ridgon for the upcoming Variance science fiction anthology, all five pages are available online here, at her website. Later on is the intriguing Smoke, with well known artist Igor Kordey┘ The last two projects, John Faust and Lowlives, are closer to release, major works rather than shorts √ and in one case, maybe even a franchise? Both of these come via the new British comics co-op, The House of Ra. Alex was good enough to grant SBC a substantial amount of time to cover these √ and other √ topics in depth. Remember the name.


The Secret Origin Of┘

Craig Lemon: Tell us a little about your background; why writing?

Alex de Campi: I've written all my life. School paper, then as a journalist out in Hong Kong, then as an analyst at an investment bank, transferred all around Asia and Latin America. It took me until age 31 to figure out that I should start writing for myself, and I haven't looked back. If I haven't been able to work on a story I'm thinking about, I just sit in a corner and shake and scratch my arms. I'd rather be sitting by myself writing than doing anything else.

Lemon: You have written - and are writing - in a number of media, not just comics. How do you determine that one idea is more suitable comics than otherwise? What is it about comics as a medium that appeals to you?

de Campi: I mainly write comics and screenplays - and of course the experimental short stories on my website. So the decision I make when I have a story idea is not "comics or prose", it's "screenplay or comic"? I go through the same very detailed character development and story outlining process for both. Then, if I think the idea is more suitable initially for a comic, I ask myself "what sort of comic"? American-style 22-page serial, European-style 46-48 page album, or Japanese-style 160-180 page tankubon? I see the American style as best for widescreen action comics; European for sci-fi, thrillers, or anything where the plot or the location has a certain sophistication; and manga for more characterisation-heavy, soap-opera type stories: detective stories, romances, dramas. Each of these three types has a very specific pacing, and visual "feel".

JOHN FAUST is a social satire of epic breadth, and really suited being in European format. American would have been too choppy. LOWLIVES is police procedural, so worked very well as a manga. I have to say, my preference is for manga and European format.

Why comics and screenplays? Well, Vladimir Nabokov was once asked in an interview if he thought in Russian (his native tongue) or English (the language of his books). His response was, "I think in pictures". That's why I write for the visual media. I think in pictures.

Lemon: Do you find it frustrating that the vision you have in your mind for your comics stories has to be interpreted by someone else?

de Campi: Not at all. I think the artist's interpretative process adds further dimensions to the work. I certainly don't have a monopoly on good ideas.

Lemon: Do you write full script to achieve this?

de Campi: I always write full scripts.

Lemon: Some would say that writing full script actually restricts the interpretative ability of an artist, as they have to do pretty much what they are told┘

de Campi: You have to understand that I am Indie Filth. With a big mainstream comic publisher, very often the writer sends a revised script off, bye-bye, and it goes to an artist that the writer has never met, who draws it without speaking to the writer. This can cause amusing problems - there's an apocryphal 2000AD story about a script describing Judge Dredd as being attacked with a cheesewire (a garotte), and the art came back with ol' Joe Dredd about to be whacked over the head with a slice of Gorgonzola.

All the artists I work with know that they're free to change anything, or to tell me if a page just doesn't work and we'll fix it together. I just ask that if they are making big changes, they just tell me first. Input is good. Surprises are bad.

Lemon: Does this cause problems when artists are assigned to your work?

de Campi: I choose my own artists; I am generally sure they are people who I like and I trust before they start working. They therefore get a lot of leeway. You have to trust people, support them, and just let them go for it. If they misinterpret something drastically, it's probably the writer's fault anyway. In addition, a writer always learns from a good artist √ they teach you something new about storytelling every time.

Lemon: How did you come to choose Felipe and Len for John Faust and Lowlives?

I knew both Felipe and Len from The V and the ADF, two Delphi fora where a lot of up and coming comics people hang out. I'd known Felipe for some time before I clicked through on his sig and checked out his work - then it was like, holy cow, this guy's a young Brazilian Enki Bilal! Len and I had been discussing projects together for ages, and finally Lowlives seemed the right thing for both of us. I also work a lot with Paul Ridgon, who I met at the launch party for Andy Diggle's LOSERS series. [Ed▓s note √ on the strength of his five-page story with Alex, Paul is now working on the new STARSHIP TROOPERS graphic novel for Mongoose Publishing.]

Lemon: How has your involvement with The House of Ra come about?

de Campi: I knew Ka Gunstone from having met him at a few conventions, and we got to talking one day about mutual frustrations with big-name publishers - we had a few editors in common, and so forth. He mentioned he was starting a studio to put work through Image and Dark Horse. At the same time, I almost accidentally found artists for a couple of creator-owned series that I had put on the back burner. I was really impressed with the way House of Ra was set up. Ka's drive plus Claire's organisation and discipline is a really formidable combination. What most impressed me is that they are running it like a proper business, which is rare among studios.

Lemon: How involved do they get √ do you just hand over the script and that▓s it, for example?

de Campi: House of Ra will publish quite a few of my projects. At the moment they don't do a lot of editing, but I have some good friends who look over my scripts and warn me when my shit starts to stink. I put together the artist and colourist on a project, get the first 10 pages and a cover done, and then House of Ra markets it for me. They are invaluable in that regard - I can concentrate more on writing. But no, I don't just write and that's it. Hopefully, I'll never just write and that's it.

Lemon: What non-House of Ra projects can you tell us about?

de Campi: I'm so busy it's untrue. I'm talking to Marvel's X-office and to Wildstorm about some stuff, but the process takes forever. I've got a series [SMOKE] in development with Igor Kordey, as well as another series I'm talking to a European publisher about. So that's anywhere between three and six comics projects on the go at once, plus the non-comics stuff like the two screenplays I have to finish by June 12.

Lemon: You also self-publish stories on your website, right?

de Campi: I've decided to do 32 LIFE DURING WARTIME stories, of which I already have 10 on the website, 4 that can't go on the website, and about 6 more written. When they're finished I'll self publish them, then start on a second phase - ADVENTURES IN MEANINGLESSNESS, where I'll do a series of experimental short stories via tarot-card plotting, cut-ups, text obscuring, etc. And I still have a day job - which explains why I don't sleep┘


John Faust:

de Campi: The story is an adaptation and modernisation of Goethe's FAUST, an 18th-century German verse play which is basically one of the five things I'd shoot into space to prove to aliens that there is intelligent life on Earth. JOHN FAUST is part horror, part comedy, part action, and filled with Goethe's vicious social satire. God and Mephistopheles make a bet that Mephistopheles can't corrupt a Chicago geneticist, John Faust. Faust manages to resist every temptation. except love. And then he pretty much corrupts himself. JOHN FAUST is set in the present. I needed to change very, very little of Goethe's original to put it in the present day.

Lemon: Obvious question - if Goethe's FAUST is just one of five things you'd send into space, what are the other four?

de Campi: Film: Cocteau's Orphee. Poem: TS Eliot's Waste Land. Painting: Breughel's Fall of Icarus. Music: the andante from Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante.

Lemon: FAUST has been great source material for films, programmes and books in the past, how do you intend to make yours different from, say, the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore comedy, Bedazzled?

de Campi: Um, it won't suck?

I think FAUST tends to get dumbed-down a lot when turned into films. Oh, bad devil, tempts man, man rises above. Not so, in the original. Fairly confused devil goes on cosmic road trip with man, meets interesting characters and watches as man corrupts himself. Even Gretchen, the great tragic heroine of Gounod's and Boito's operas, is not entirely blameless in Goethe's original.

It's actually a very psychologically complex work, and can be incredibly funny and horrifyingly tragic almost in the same moment. The characters come across as real people, who sometimes make very brave, intelligent decisions, and sometimes make stupid decisions - just like in real life. I've tried to preserve that feeling.

Lemon: The European feel does come across from Felipe's art on his website, did the story come first and the artist chosen to match, or did the story change to match the artist's skills?

de Campi: Felipe's style didn't really cause me to change the script any; more like I waited for a long time until I found the right artist.

Lemon: What changes √ if any! - have been made to help the book find a US publisher and audience?

de Campi: But. but. FAUST has fraternity parties! Advice on college majors from the Devil! And sniffing girls' panties! The agony of Heaven being a No Smoking area! Dead presidents! Shit getting fucked up on an epic scale! It's so accessible. Okay, I admit, there's some meaning-of-life stuff, but if you squint hard, you can kind of ignore it. Possibly foolishly, I refuse to compromise, but I know a lot of people who are both diehard Uncanny X-Men fans, and also readers of more non-mainstream stuff, so I live in hope. I think it's time people stopped underestimating readers' intelligence. What I'm really trying to do with JOHN FAUST, though, is to lure in non-comics readers.

Lemon: What is the proposed length/publishing format for the story?

de Campi: Three 46-page full colour issues. There may or may not be a trade afterwards.

Lemon: Is the intention to have all three issues finished before any are published?

de Campi: We'll publish each of the instalments as we finish them. Of the entire work, I've written 2/3. Part I should be out at the end of this year.


Lowlives

de Campi: Lowlives is more absurdist, action-oriented and funny than, say, Gotham Central. Think of a comic version of THE SHIELD. I think the manga format is really suited to a police procedural story anyway. We follow the adventures of Kheri Owens and Cassandra Doe, two detectives in LAPD's Homicide Special "freak squad" who. well, they take care of the weird stuff.

Lemon: Are they freaks themselves, or more Mulder & Scully - doing the jobs no-one else wants to touch?

de Campi: They are freaks themselves.

The first book starts off with newly-transferred-in Kheri meeting his team, Homicide Special I, and his partner, Cassandra, who has been with the unit for several years. That night, they have their first call-out: the badly-burned body of a fish-man has washed up on Venice Beach. Cass and Kheri investigate ("Yo! Detectives! Hope you brought the tartar sauce.."). As the series goes on, we delve more into the lives of the Homicide Special team as well as how all of LA's freaks came to exist.

Lemon: It sounds like the concept lends itself to a series of books √ is this initial story deliberately intended as volume one of a series, do you have further ideas to develop down the line, or is it a done-in-one job?

de Campi: Well, length/format is classic tankubon format, so black and white, digest size and 160-180 pages. I have five books of LOWLIVES sketched out! It's most definitely an ongoing series, sales and publisher permitting. There's quite a lot of drama in the interactions between members of the Homicide Special team, Kheri and his family, and Cass and her past, that I want to develop.



Under The Influence

Lemon: Who would you say are your biggest influences as a writer, either in comics or elsewhere?

de Campi: I love so many things. The novels of Raymond Chandler, Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Joseph Heller, Italo Calvino, and four Russians: Pushkin, Turgenev, Lermontov, and Bulgakov. The plays of Luigi Pirandello and Edward Albee. TS Eliot's The Waste Land, a poem for which my love verges on the unholy. Dave Hickey's essays on art and culture. Henry Rollins' rants on the lack of culture.

Lemon: Something about Calvino▓s book, The Castle Of Crossed Destinies, which really appealed to me was the way that book came out by him essentially just dealing out a pack of tarot cards, moving a few around, and creating stories based on the order they appeared. Have you ever considered doing something similar?

de Campi: My favourite Calvino books by far are COSMICOMICS and BARON IN THE TREES. But yes, I have thought about doing a CROSSED DESTINIES story with tarot cards. It could really work well as a comic. Strange, I've been thinking a lot about experimental fiction and plot generation recently: William Burroughs-esque cut-ups; using pages from very banal sources (instruction manuals; the Racing Post, etc) to create word pools out of which one makes stories or poems; manipulating/painting over existing text to create new texts a la Tom Phillips; and so forth. Some results of all this thinking may appear on my website in the coming months, if I don't decide it's just a pile of irredeemable artwank.

Lemon: How about comics influences?

de Campi: Some of my favourite comics work has been written by Kazuo Koike (LONE WOLF & CUB), Enki Bilal, Takehiro Inoue (VAGABOND), Kurt Busiek, Garth Ennis, Joe Casey, and Ed Brubaker. God, I'm probably the only person in the comic universe not to cite Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman as influences, but there you go.

Lemon: Is there something particular in Moore's and Gaiman's work that doesn't appeal, or are they just further down the pecking order?

de Campi: Oh God, I'm going to get in so much trouble for saying this. Both Moore and Gaiman tend to overwrite. And Gaiman's heroes are so passive. I like their work, it's just not high on my list.

Lemon: From those creators, is there one comic you could hold up to someone and say "this is what I aspire to"?

de Campi: Not really. I aspire to have my own voice.

Lemon: Where would you like to be - in comics terms - in five or ten years?

de Campi: I want to have broken a few rules. I want to have produced mangas that were bought in bookstores and enjoyed by people who do not consider themselves comic readers, and I want those mangas to have outsold all the 22 page monthlies. (This is not a big goal, by the way). I want to have had a couple of successful creator-owned series of albums published in Europe. And I still want to be working and hanging out with the people I'm working with now, because I've been luckier with artists than you could possibly believe, and I'm having a blast.