A few weeks ago I reviewed a fantastic series from Archaia – Feeding Ground – review here – since then, I have been in contact with the creative team behind this exciting and ground-breaking series.  The following is an interview that talks about the how’s and why of the book that should not be missed!

Q&A with Chris Mangun, Swifty Lang and Michael Lapinski and the creative team behind Archaia’s Feeding Ground

Eric: Hey guys, thanks for speaking with ThePullbox.   I thoroughly enjoyed this series and look forward to your talkback.            Feeding Ground, at its core is a pretty emotional and intense story, where did the story originate from?

Swifty: Feeding Ground began as a conversation about two years ago between my friend Thomas Peyton, a documentary filmmaker who had recently finished his film about border crossing, 3 Men From 3 Valleys. He told me harrowing tales about the circumstances that individual crossers face in their journey to the United States. We also had a separate conversation about werewolves. They were certainly, at the time, one of the most poorly represented monsters in monsterdom, hemmed in by old rules (silver bullets, full-moons, etc.) and beckoning to be revisited. We also learned through Luis Alberta Urea’s The Devil’s Highway, how truly horrifying the trek itself is. We knew we had found the ideal setting to let the wolves roam, and opportunity to bring light to real, absolutely devastating, circumstances. Crossing the Devil’s Highway was fundamentally about survival, and this is the crux of any horrifying experience. How does one survive and what is their reason to continue. The real challenge has been trying to respect the reality of the situation while creating space to tell a great horror story. Ultimately, if we are reflecting reality, it is within a funhouse mirror.

Eric: Do any of you have person history or experience that is reflected in the story?

Swifty: I’ve been fortunate enough to have my experience relegated to research, second hand accounts, and imagination. Through reading about the issues I have come closer to understanding, but I am not an expert by any means. I have the luxury of being able to create a story from the comfort of my home; one that will hopefully encourage people to find out what is happening, and more importantly to recognize the bravery of anyone attempting to make a better life for him or herself. We are attempting to tap into what is universal about sacrificing one’s identity to make a better life for their family.  On a personal note, anyone who knows me knows I truly have one of the world’s worst senses of direction. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to the figure of a coyote as a hero, as a kind of wish-fulfillment. In my mind, knowing which way is north is almost a superpower.

Eric: Given that immigration is a political hot button for many people, what kind of feedback have you gotten on this book? Positive? Negative?

Chris: The feedback on the “real world” political component of Feeding Ground has been positive. By and large, those that want to talk about this aspect have been people who have lived in Mexico or the border region and are glad to see that more light is being shined on this dark situation that tens of thousands face. I recall one woman at the last NY Con telling me about how her husband and she were trying to get their niece (who was living with her mom near Juarez) into America to live with them in New Jersey.  She spoke about the things parents fear in destitute border towns of Mexico…. rape, poverty, lack of opportunity and corruption.  After a few minutes of sharing she was tearful and thankful for a conversation piece, in this case our comic, to talk about larger temporal human things.

Michael: The best feedback I received about the art came from a woman who was quietly poring over the book at a convention.  She eventually revealed that she grew up in the region we were depicting and that we had captured the spirit of her memories.

Eric: Why not just do a dramatic story about immigration?  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but why add werewolves to something that for a great deal of families is something very real?

Swifty: The idea of transformation, the most fundamental part of the monster, struck me as something not only corollary but integral to the crosser’s journey of seeking out a new life. Essentially, an immigration tale is about becoming something else.  It is about surrendering identity and in some cases becoming something new and monstrous. Werewolves embody this metamorphosis

Michael: Also, we’re not reporters.  Hopefully, as storytellers, we’ve created a myth that speaks to universal themes of survival or the sacrifices of being a parent.  The true story of The Devil’s Highway is more horrendous than anything we’ve concocted but the lens of genre horror can offer multiple entry points for reflection.

Eric: Was there anything else that you wanted to do with the story, but was stopped (censored/edited)?

Chris: Our publisher has been pretty Laissez-fair on our censorship or editing. This is nice, but, has forced us as a team of 3 to do a lot of self-editing. For example, elements from our initial Issue 1 script are now paced out over the first three issues. There were also subplots that we couldn’t agree fit in our story arc or horror style.  One example was the desert oasis called El Verde.  It involved Diego being wounded in the desert, taken back by mutants to a mythic desert colony called El Verde to be nursed back to health. These were the surviving victims of wolf bites infected with Blackwell’s degenerating bloodline. I thought the idea was creative, but put down a kill card on it as kind of self-editing. It just didn’t seem to fit with our necessary action and was almost comical vs rooted in reality. There was also a wolf sex scene in a back alley that might have occurred if it wasn’t eventually stomped out by unanimous vote…   Really, the editing occurred in moments like these, asking what is essential to get the reader from here to there. This taught us how to tell a story that as economical as possible given the scope of our intentions.

Eric: On that note, how much impact did Archaia have on your final product?

Michael: From the very beginning, Archaia has been a publisher that encouraged us to pursue those aspects of our book that made it unique. I initially pitched Feeding Ground on behalf of the team at New York Comic Con back in 2009. Upon reviewing the pitch book, the very first thing Archaia owner PJ Bickett asked me was if we’d want to publish Feeding Ground as an English/Spanish flipbook. At that moment, we knew that Archaia was the sort of inventive, forward-thinking, company we wanted to be a part of.  Now as we gear up to design the hardcover collected edition we aim to hit the high watermark they have set in publishing well-crafted, attractive, books.

Eric: Will the world of Feeding Ground expand beyond this original series?

Chris: While we conceived of Feeding Ground as a single story, the development process allowed us to build a world that could offer up countless tales.  For example, in order to understand his motivation, we have an epic back story for Blackwell that would be fun to explore.  On the other side, the final issue of the mini-series sets up a new status quo that would allow us to follow the repercussions and/or the surviving members of the family in America if we choose to. Before we even get there, the six issue mini will be collected into the hardcover this summer.  The Spanish and English editions will be published separately and the floppies will be the only way to purchase the story in the bi-lingual format.  Also worth noting is that we are not treating the collection as merely a reprinting of the previously released material.  As first-time creators, we have learned so much with each issue and aim to revise the content so that the HC better reflects our skill level and vision for the story and that reads as a single graphic novel in its own right.

Eric: For the reader, the synthesis of the writing and art style flowed well; did the visual develop alongside the story? Or did the fully detailed story come first?

Michael: Swifty and I have the benefit of being friends for years. In part, the aesthetic was inspired by a book of Mexican woodcuts he had gotten me for a birthday present coupled with Swamp Thing and EC Comics I had shared with him. He already had a vision for how the story would be delivered as a package, the design AS story. With that, my goal was then to create an aesthetic that evoked the region more than merely illustrated it.

For me, the color is just as important as the line work in terms of communicating narrative. Rather than fully-rendered digital coloring, I wanted something stark and raw, using layered flat colors and digital distress in Photoshop for industrial printing results.  I had also just come off of years of illustrating for children’s animated television so I initially turned to photo-reference as a tool to achieve the level of realism I felt was necessary in my character work and story details, although I’ve used it less and less with each subsequent issue.

Eric: In that vein, how much impact did the art style have on the story or vice-versa?

Swifty: The three of us collaborate through coming up with the story together, duking out the beats, and each of us doing anything we can to bring the vision to life. We literally have ‘kill cards’ in which we shoot down each other’s ideas; there is a pretty intense vetting process. Ultimately, I am bringing together the dialogue, the character moments and trying to create truly striking images. Michael, our illustrator, brings them to life and acts a bit like the conductor, laying out these moments and making sure they hit in the right places visually. He usually blows my mind at least once an issue doing something wholly original, picking up on subtext and making it explode. Chris is a designer and layout artist responsible for making sure that dialogue sings and helping create aural effects.

Michael: Swifty’s an innately visual writer and great at both scene setting and visual metaphors that I find reinforce the dreamy, mythical, quality of our story.  Technically-speaking, after we all plot out the beats and Swift does a first pass; I will thumbnail the full issue for approval so that we’re all in agreement on my delivery before I hole up in my studio cave to execute it.  At that point, there’s the long process of getting it done.

Eric: Okay, shameless plug time – any other upcoming projects coming up (individually or as a group)?

Swifty: Michael and I are currently talking to Stephen Christy (of Archaia) about what’s next. The possible projects are so diverse, one set in Miami taking place in the 1980’s, one involving runaways. One thing I am certainly looking to do is tell a story that is smaller. There are a lot of threads running through the Feeding Ground narrative, and focusing on just a couple of characters for our next comic would be a welcome breather. Michael and I are really interested in pushing aesthetics. The next step is creating something with an entirely different look. Archaia has been very good to us and their eye for design is incredible. They are a publisher that is open to visual experimentation. They definitely put out some of the best stories and packages on the market.

Michael: We do also have a few short works appearing in upcoming anthologies. Swifty and I had done a 2-pager for The Gathering #4 by Greyhaven Comics and I illustrated the song “Sons of Ba’al” for the band Americans UK in their ROCKTRONIC MIX TAPE #2, out this summer.  Both were great opportunities work out other story muscles and visual styles. Before Feeding Ground, my career has been as an art director working in children’s animation and I have a few new projects in the works in that field as well.

Chris: I’ve been working on Arsenal Park, a social story about a dark mystery that affects a suburb 50-miles southwest of Chicago.  It’s of the Twin Peaks or Lost ilk. I’ve been writing and formatting it so when it hits production it can find a home/trickle down in many media, video game, graphic novel, iPhone; etc.  My day job as a digital strategist has been hit hard by knowing how to build a platform that amortizes easily into other platforms.  But, that being said, Arsenal Park still requires some serious TLC time before being shopped around, hopefully by later this year.

Eric: Once again – this is truly an amazing project – Thanks for talking with me!