Broken Frontier

After slashing their way onto the comic book scene with their first Sam Noir series, Sam Noir: Samurai Detective, the creative team of Manny Trembley and Eric A. Anderson stopped by to chat about the next round with everyone’s favorite Samurai Detective and how he might become a Squirrel Cop next…

BROKEN FRONTIER: When last we spoke, you both had expressed a serious interest in possibly doing more Sam Noir series down the line, but this seemed to come out pretty quickly on the heels of the last one.  What produced such a quick turnaround in terms of getting another series out right away and how do you both feel about putting another out so quickly?

ERIC A. ANDERSON: The initiative to jump right on to the next Sam Noir series, Ronin Holiday, actually originated from our publisher and editor at Shadowline.  By the time we were finishing up the first series, our pre-order numbers were coming in, and Jim Valentino and Kris Simon were really encouraged by the sales and prompted us to start thinking about a follow up.

MANNY TREMBLEY: Because we didn't know whether or not there would be any more, the first series was designed as a stand-alone story.  But when we were asked to think about a sequel, Eric and I came up with a larger story arc that continued the narrative from the first series and we both got really excited about telling the larger story.

EA: We were always planning to jump right onto another comic project, we just weren't sure what.  As it turned out, it was more Sam, and that was just fine by us.

BF: Did you learn anything from the process of putting out the first series that you used when putting this new one together?

MT: In the first series we were still finding our footing and trying to find a balance of using narration to tell the story.  In the second series, we started using the narration more as punctuation to the story, rather than as the main storytelling element, and I think we got better at it.

EA: I totally agree.  I look back at some of the sequences in the first series, primarily issue #1 and I cringe at the amount of text we put in there.  Nowadays, I think we have a much better sense of how much we need to effectively execute a scene, and I continue to be surprised at how much you can do with just a little bit.

BF: The first series showed Sam take revenge on those that murdered a girl who he became infatuated in and this series seems to stem straight out of those events.  More specifically, it sees him take a vacation.  Any reason for the change in locale?

EA:  I think the main motivation is that we were just sick of the same old dark, gritty setting.  And at one point we kind of chuckled at the idea of doing a noir-style story set in the sunny tropics.  Sam basically went on vacation to give US a vacation, in creating the story.

MT: If I recall correctly, we also wanted to have a co-star to help contrast Sam's character, and there's nothing quite as “contrasty” as a pirate detective.  We heart pirates big-big.

EA: The whole pirate theme seemed to work with the tropical setting, so we ran with it.

BF: How quickly did you put together the story idea for this one?  Was it obvious to you guys where to take the character next?

MT: It didn't take long.  It was a pretty easy transition into writing the second series.  Once we had some ideas for the villains and the new sidekick character we got really excited about it.  After we started mounding on assorted cliché characters and scenarios, we got a bit concerned that Kris (our editor) might not be okay with the hodgepodge of content.

EA: Much to our surprise, she wrote back right after reading our treatment with an email that went something like: "Oh my god, I can't believe you guys have pirates and ninjas and zombies all in the same book… and it actually WORKS."  I think the simple answer to your question about where we decided to take the character next is that we always take the story from one cliché to another.  For us, we think about "what cheesy cliché situation have we NOT used yet?"  That's where we go next.

BF: Honestly... how much fun is this character to write and draw?  The only thing Sam seems to do better than create new enemies is to kill them, does it get any better?  What are the best parts about having created this bad ass samurai character who speaks like a Dashiell Hammett character?

MT: Sam is like a barrel of monkeys, all having fun.  There's a certain freedom in writing Sam, because of how blunt, abrasive, and misogynistic he is.  I think once we allowed his narrative to be really goofy, it made writing him more enjoyable because that kind of humor is right up both our alleys.

EA: Yeah, and the fact that this book is really a comedy is what makes it so much fun to write.  We certainly don't take Sam's character seriously, and the reader isn't supposed to either.  It allows us to have Sam say (and think) all kinds of absurd stuff, and not only does it not "break" the mood of the book, it actually helps define it.  Crackin' dumb jokes is where it's at.

MT: In contrast, the art style is generally played for serious.  It was born out of a necessity to create a style that I could actually produce in a timely fashion. Having never published a book under a real deadline, I wanted to make sure the art for each book didn't take months to produce.  I actually don't prefer to work in this visual style, but it fits the tone of the book, and the fans seem to like it.

BF: Finally, should we expect more from Sam after this series?  Do you guys have any other projects you want to try?  And is there a possibility that Sam Noir becomes an ongoing series?

EA: We have at least one more Sam series in us, which should tie up the major, overarching plot that connects all the books.  Beyond that, we don't have anything solid planned for Sam, but in the future if we come up with some new stories, we could easily dip back into Sam's world and play around some more.

MT: Rather than forcing Sam Noir to be an ongoing comic, we'd rather come back to Sam when the mood is right.  One thing both of us would like is to be able to go and tell other stories and develop other comics, and that just wouldn't be possible if we were obligated to also be producing a whole new Sam comic each month. 

On the topic of other work, I do have a very personal project called "Sara Punkinhead" that will be released through Shadowline this fall.  I'm sure more will be said about that in the coming months.
Plus, I have artistic A.D.D.  No matter what I'm working on, I'm always thinking about new characters and new concepts.

EA: It's true.  You're lucky Sam Noir hasn't already devolved into a cop drama starring a squirrel and a toilet plunger. Manny's sitting here right now thinking about that stupid statement as a potential new comic. I'm not kidding. It'll probably be in stores this summer.

MT: We'll have to run that past Kris though.

EA: Yeah, but she's a sucker for squirrels.  We'll call it "Squirrelsky and Flush".  Has this interview sufficiently gone off the rails yet?

MT: Check.  And we've just given a sneak-peek into our secret comics-writing process as well.

Sam Noir: Ronin Holiday #2 goes on sale next Wednesday, March 7, from Image Comics. Click here to see a five-page preview.