Interview: David Doub

When it seems like everything imaginable is migrating onto the internet, it's no surprise that the comics-creation process is getting a digital redux as well. Fresh off of his first completed and published volume, Dusk, manga-influenced but Western-comics-savvy David Doub is the posterchild of the East-meets-West, DIY creative process on the upswing in recent years. I (digitally, of course) sat down with him to talk comics, vampires, and Dusk's first installment.

Chloe Ferguson: Dusk is a collaborative effort; can you elaborate a bit on who else is involved in the process, and how you all found each other?

David Doub: Mainly, I found most of my team from this great website called Digitalwebbing.com.  It’s a great resource to find fellow creators and talk about the craft of making comics. Also, everyone involved believes and enjoys the story, and that’s why they do the work.  And honestly, I’d prefer someone who had some passion for the story to work on it because I feel that comes out in the page.

 The full art team is as follows –

Pencils by 

Maki Naro – Chapters 1 & 2

Jerry Gonzales – Chapter 3

Franc Czuba – Chapter 4

Inks by

Chris Scott – Chapter 1, 2, &4

Jerry Gonzales – Chapter 3

 

Letters by

Jaymes Reed – Chapters 1 through 4

Jaymes is coming back for the next volume, schedule permitting.  Also Jerry should have a chapter in the next Dusk as well. Also, Jerry and I are working on another project where we’re redoing a public domain superhero character called Miss Masque. She’s been redone several times over the years, but I wanted to try my hand at it.

Chloe: You mention manga influences at work- what are some of the manga and that you've found inspiring and why?

David: Well first off there’s several techniques I’ve taken from manga overall, and not any particular source.  One would be the lack of captions and let the story be told by the characters’ actions and words. I don’t completely not use captions, but I use them very sparingly. Also, I use the paneling style in manga to show various transitional panels to help establish the mood. For example, using a panel to show a closeup of a gaze or using a panel to allow a melancholy shot of the wind blowing someone’s hair as they stare off in the distance. Western comics is more about the conservation of panels to be able to fit more story into a single installment.

I’ve also taken some of the story beats from shojo manga and its use of unrequited love and love conquers all themes. Mind you, I’m a bit older than the typical shojo reader, so when I do use such elements, I do tend to put some cynicism and harsh reality to mix things up but in the end it’s still a heavy dose of drama for the story.

Some manga creators I follow are Clamp, Rumiko Takahashi, Kenichi Sonoda, Natsuki Takaya, and Kazushi Hagiwara. Off hand, I can easily see some of my action coming from Kenichi Sonoda’s influence. With all those creators I don’t dare assume at their level of skill

Chloe: There's clearly a lot that goes into this; what's the typical creative process involved in putting together Dusk?

David: It’s fairly straight forward if you’re familiar with comic creation. I write the script. I give the script to the artist. We go back and forth on any items that need clarification or can be adjusted for better effect. Then it’s inked, lettered, formatted for printing and that’s that.

The big issue for me, is I’m effectively the publisher, so I have to take on a lot of roles. I have to be art director, editor, marketing, and printing.  It’s been quite a steep learning curve as I’ve figured how to do all these roles and I’m still learning. Luckily, everyone involved has been more than helpful to add their knowledge when and where they can.

Chloe: The plot of Dusk- and indeed, its central protagonist- aren't the typical vampire types. Where did Eve and co. come from?

David: Technically Eve, and the male vampire Ash, came from a game. I used to run a lot of Vampire live action roleplaying, and Eve came out a particular plot that I wrote for the game. Eve was a non-player character so the player helped flesh her out in ways I hadn’t thought of. From plotting and writing so many games, I thought to use these stories in a different manner.

Also, I liked flawed characters. The more perfect or badass a character is, I tend to back away from the character. I think there’s a lot of tension and drama that can come from a flawed character, and I enjoy seeing that played out.

Another thing is that when you’re dealing with the power levels that a vampire can have, that can rob some of the tension and sense of danger because there are no valid threats. So with focusing on a mortal you can bring back more of that danger and provide a different viewpoint of this dark setting.

Chloe: I understand a second volume is in the works. Where do you see Dusk as headed? Is there anything you would change, or plan to change, in future installments?

David: My main goal in future volumes is to show more of the characters’ histories and personalities in small glimpses covered with good horror stories. Reading so many American Superhero comics, I’ve grown bored of the “origin” and I feel there’s a better sense of mystery when there is a slow reveal versus just having a complete information dump.

I'm enjoying moving the characters through traditional vampire and supernatural stories and will continue that for awhile.  I don’t want it to get too over the top the way Hollywood has, where it’s just an action story about saving the world or some such nonsense. That’s too much noise and flash and not enough substance for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy a good spectacle, but sometimes you’re hungry for something totally different too.

Chloe: What would you like for readers to take away from Dusk?

David: Enjoyment. That’s my main goal with Dusk. I want the readers to have a good time reading the story. To be entertained.

I like to think I’m bringing back vampires to their roots, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’m accomplishing such a feat. I’m just having fun in a setting that I enjoy and I hope the readers appreciate the ride.

Of course, any meanings or symbolism or what have you that a reader make take from Dusk is just fine. There is no wrong or right way to read it. It can be as deep or light as you like. Dusk is quite shapeshifter like that. 

 

Volume one of Dusk is available now.

 

Gekiga and the Grey Lady

There's much to like about the New York Times' hefty review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life. For starters, its very presence attests to a fact that outside press has taken far to long to realize: manga, as a medium, is rich in all kinds of stories even (gasp! shock!) nitty-gritty outsider ones.
Yet limitations and problems still abound, some of them stemming from overused manga article tropes, other from the sheer limitation of, well, having a book critic try to pulp meaning from a graphic novel. The review's uncomfortable use of present tense in several instances (manga is "serialized black-and-white comics whose characters have a distinctive iconography: big, dewy eyes; tiny mouths; piles of spiky hair. Most manga takes place in a bright alternate universe where it seems as if any problem might be resolved with a cute-off: batting eyelashes at 10 paces) is conducive to what I might call "that sinking feeling" in anyone who reads mainstream press coverage of manga with an ounce of good sense.
Equally baffling is Garner's use of common manga fact as a scorn-worthy factor. In short, "the relationship between illustration and prose, in long-form comics, is symbiotic: you wouldn’t necessarily want to pry one from the other."
Yes?
And?
Such is the nature of manga; one wouldn't say "well, I just read the screenplay for the movie, and without the visuals, it would be kind of poor." The two are inherently together, as the prose feeds off of the visuals and vice versa; the hallmark of a well crafted volume has, for me, always been the success of the author's combination of tale and visual delivery. A hat tip to Mr. Garner for recognizing that A Drifting Life is best enjoyed as a work whose "pleasures are cumulative"- that, unlike prose, it must be enjoyed a little bit more on the intuitive side (and, perhaps only in an ideal world, without tired cliches preceding it).

And the winner is...

Congratulations to Diana Dang, who is the winner of the xxxHolic novel. (Diana, please contact me with your shipping address so I can send you your prize!)

Shuchaku East v.2.0

After an extended absence (the PCS review mountain is a great and terrible opponent, albeit an enjoyable one) Shuchaku East has gotten a much-needed revamp and some soon to come content on everything from bookstores to buying habits.
In the mean time, there's nothing like a triumph over wily HTML to put one into a giving mood; this week (4/8 - 4/15) I'll be handing out a luscious hardback edition of the xxxHolic light novel, "xxxHolic: AnotherHOLiC", rather ostensibly by Clamp and Japanese light novelist du jour Nisioisin. For free! To enter, simply pop an email my way with the subject "xxxHolic Contest" and you're entered; it'll all be decided extremely scientifically, of course, namely through the usage of an old hat and some paper slips on the 15th.

Good luck!

Not-so-cultural deviance

"In the United States (unlike, say, in Japan), it remains an act of fairly extreme cultural deviance to tell your friends that you are going to stay home on a Friday night reading comic books."

Dear Seth Schiesel,
I quite like your snappy VG coverage for the NYTimes. It's literate and enjoyable. Really. That said, I regret to inform you that the socially inept here also qualify as the socially inept in Japan. Much like standard casual reading, or perhaps using one's mp3 player, a vast majority of manga reading goes on in moments of down time amidst other things. Witness the plethora of weekly manga phonebooks strewn on the upper reaches of buses and trains, or the classroom full of students flipping comic book pages before the arrival of a teacher. If one is staying home on a Friday night explicitly to read comic books, it is with deep remorse that I am forced to inform you that even a transition to the strange and wonderful country of Japan, lo, where they call comic books manga, cannot redeem these behaviors as socially acceptable. Granted, there's more leeway around the whole comic-book-reading-thing, but a shut-in is a shut-in, even if he or she goes by a different name.

Aging Up the Ladder

It’s no secret that manga has an almost endless supply of stories designed to appeal to every corner of the market. That said, quite a few of them don’t make the jump across the pond, as it’s also no secret that the big buying power emanates from the under 20 demographic. OEL creators are constrained by this same limitation, and have accordingly adapted their creative offerings to appeal to a big, young chunk of the market. Which brings us to the big, omnipresent thing that OEL titles simply don’t have at this point, and one of the domains that manga must concede to US creations: the ability to tell a distinctly American story in a manga format and have it be written by an American author.
This isn’t to say it can never be done; what it will take, however, is both time and long term commitment on the part of American readers and a greater willingness to embrace OEL. Watchmen, perhaps one of the biggest American comics titles of all, did not simply materialize from a juvenile market- it stood atop decades of American comics output and readership. In order for the book to sell, there had to be an appropriately aged population, one that could look back over its themes rooted in the post-Vietnam and late Cold War years and nod along accordingly. Two rules, really: they had to be old enough to appreciate the book, and with enough of an interest in comics (or the comic format) to shell out for it.
Flash forward to today’s manga market. The biggest consumers are teens, and they generally go for teen oriented titles. Thematically heavy or violent titles inhabit the seinen fringe, generally relegated to smaller sales numbers. OEL titles crib the same elements- coming of age tales, young romance, vampires, or other teeny bopper fare- and generally rehash the same stories, just with more computerized tone and fewer Japanese names. The cultural catharsis on paper still seems a few decades away- if it ever arrives. Manga, as a medium, is not the obstacle here. Indeed, the Japanese manga market, now inching into a maturity similar to that of the US market, has taken to similar bouts of self reflection- particularly on the rocky topic of Japan and the bomb. (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Barefoot Gen, among others.) Perhaps even more directly, works like Me and the Devil Blues has proved that it’s possible to serve up a mighty good slice of Americana in true manga style.
The issue isn’t that it can’t be done, but rather, that our current market won’t allow it to be. Even if a visionary, thoughtful creator emerged and produced a visionary, groundbreaking piece of work, who would publish it? OEL is on shaky legs as it is. Ask a company to take a risk on an adult oriented, culturally serious title? Take a hike, kiddo. For now, it remains to be seen if Japanese seinen and josei titles can merit American shelf space. Only once the market has come to grips with how-and if- they want to tackle older consumers and aging first gen readership can it focus on pushing its OEL output to the next level. Until then, you’ll just have to hit up the American comics section.

For better or for worse

Having always been a very vocal critic of the original Tokyopop website, I will of course put on the reviewer hat and go to town with the new beta version of it. The original eventually became a sprawling mess of social networking and user content, where looking up a book's pagecount was nothing less than an ordeal and where one was left to wonder how a publisher's website could be so down on books.
The good (middling?) news is that the problem has mildly been ameliorated: all the user content has been grouped under three central dropdown menus, and some the more ambiguous labels (Hot!) have been canned.
The bad news is that it's still a bit of a mess, with confusing functions and illogical placement marring the new improvements. Ostensibly, if I was going try and actually buy a book of off the site, I should go to "Shop", right? Wrong: shop links to a page rife with TP titles, but also Viz titles, a Del Rey...what? The Shop function is merely an aggregator of Amazon links for manga from all publishers- clicking on a title takes you to its page, complete with "Add to Shopping Cart" button. Tokyopop, I can see putting your books through to Amazon, but everyone elses? Isn't this becoming a cutthroat market?! Promotion is promotion is promotion, and even inclining someone to choose a foreign title sounds highly illogical- not to mention that Amazon makes finding a title perfectly easy itself. I sincerely hope this is secretely about getting a commission from the sale.
Actually finding the books on TP's website is now under Manga + Comics, where various genre and alphebetical filters allow you to narrow the field to what you're looking for. It would be nice to have a search function with catalogue recall, but, frustratingly, the only one available (much like before) is a Google custom search, which looks for keyword recall in all pages of the site (read: not useful). The beta version is indeed an improvement from the original, but then, when you hit the bottom, I suppose you can only go up.