Broken Frontier

Writer/artist Aleister Gilgrim talks with BF about his new OGN Ferrymen. Dying unicorns, geeky love and international living are also discussed. Gilgrim first came to prominence with his series from Slave Labor Graphics, 2006's The Cemetarians. The Chapman University graduate has also worked outside of comics, including designing tattoos and shirts with his distinctive manga inspired flavor and working at the unique Disney English school.

However it is his latest project that has taken most of his time, and is now ready for release, after springing forth from his short story in Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga Volume 3. Ferrymen is a 160 page black and white OGN from Transfuzion Publishing. Originally called Dorothy, the ambitious tale tells of a young girl, a "newlydead" who soon discovers that the afterlife is far more complex than she imagined as she traverses heaven, hell and purgatory, or as Gilgrim describes the book, "Underworld by way of Neverwhere and Avalon."

BROKEN FRONTIER: How important was The Cemetarians to your career as a creator?

ALEISTER GILGRIM: It was really important actually. It wasn't my first work and I was actually already started on Ferrymen when I did Cemeterians but, Cemeterians itself was the first real taste of what it was like to work with a real and respected publisher (SLG is amazing to their creators). On the creative side it allowed me to try something different because when I started in comics I was at that weird cusp of the American Manga beginnings and Cemeterians really allowed me to try and stretch myself in a different way, with a different look and to let me be a bit more open and free with the storylines and the characters. I would say because of the circumstances, even though I don't think it's my best work by far, that it was a great place to start.

BF: I understand Ferrymen took about five years to complete. How did you stay motivated?

AG: Lol, um... pure stubbornness? Actually that's probably not too far off. Believe me, it was not the easiest project to finish. I don't ever want to do that again with any book. But like any career and any medium it's always a learning process and I think I learned a lot between Ferrymen and Cemeterians on how to keep at it, how to put a book together (something that I hope I'm continuing to get better and better at) and see the entire process through with every weird hiccup real life can offer you in the process.

I think at the core though, it was something that I started and had to stop once to work on Cemeterians and I really felt that I had to finish Ferrymen before I could even consider working on another book. In the meantime I was also doing Megalo Life for the Trickster Online MMO and the Normality Restored webcomics and I didn't like seeing how tough it was to juggle my time between them and this unfinished book that was always hanging over my head. Just didn't feel right starting another book until this one was done, no matter what. So, maybe seeking closure is the best answer.

BF: Are there any aspects of Ferrymen that are based on myths or ancient tales, or is it all from what’s inside your head?

AG: No, it's not from just inside my head. There're a lot of myths and folktales that the book's world pulls from. There isn't anything directly used as the entire basis for the book's world, but obvious things like the perception of the afterlife's structure and even the characters' names should elude to some of tales that the Ferrymen world is based on.

I did take those ideas as a basis for the world and cut and pasted aspects that I liked or thought worked for Ferrymen and in that sense I guess it's a personal remix cobbled together from a lot of influences thrown into the blender and mashed-up to fit what I thought worked for the story. The overall theme of the book though (as spoken by Xristian at the end) is something very personal though and probably one of the few things from the book you could say that I do directly believe in.

BF: What was the most significant change to the project during that time?

AG: I think the biggest change was a sort of happy accident that happened during an edit of one of the final drafts of the script a couple of years ago. I was already about halfway or more through making the art and I was working chronologically through it, the book was originally planned as a trilogy that would follow Dorothy and the other characters through a slightly more spread out and epic journey through the war in the afterlife. Somewhere (I think 2 years or so ago) I decided that I really didn't want to try and extend the story that way and the ending exploded in my head, which when I finally put it down in the final product I knew that it was really the best and truest ending for the book that I could make. It tied the whole thing together.

BF: Your interests cover both American and Japanese comics and art. Do you think comics readers are generally open to styles and stories outside of The Big Two?

AG: Years ago I would've said nah... then during the '90s boom I would've said yes as far as indie books are concerned, but now I would have to change the answer again and say no. I think the shotgun blast of manga into the comic reading community plus Diamond's well-known issues with distribution and helping the direct market to adapt to competing with the big chain book stores actually did more polarization than help. I think the whole thing really helped on one hand to bring a lot more fans into the community but also established some pretty ugly and hard to cross party lines. Readers seem to draw a lot of identity from which genre, publisher or even country the books they read come from... and that's simply f****d up. It shouldn't be about that, and I know especially with the vastly growing manga following that many fans are young and don't know what's out there on the edges and on the fringe of the publishing circuit, but I think if you're a fan it should be more about the story, the book itself. Right now, I just don't see that the community is quite to that point of appreciation. It's a lot of hard work to get there, to find those special gems in the slush, but if you don't, what's the point. It's like saying you're a cinephile and that Titanic was the best f***ng movie ever... you just can't be taken seriously and moreover you're obviously missing out on so much cool s**t.

BF: Not many people can say they’ve lived in three different countries. How did you become an international man of mystery?

AG: Ha ha ha! Um, actually, I simply had a very interesting set of opportunities come my way growing up. Japan was a fluke but one I dearly loved and it came at just the right time (college). Russia was also an incredible opportunity, but I had the excuse of my wife at the time being an immigrant from Russia so it only makes sense that we'd try to take advantage of the fact that she had family still back there and check it out. It wasn't intentional at all, but even during the rough parts of those experiences I wouldn't turn them in for anything and I'm really happy to have had them. Still need to hit western Europe and Canada. They're on the to-do list.

BF: Japan and Russia must have been goldmines of inspiration. Was there anything in those nations that really surprised and encouraged you as an artist?

AG: Russia definitely held a lot of inspiration just in the texture and culture and the history of the place. Oddly enough, Japan not so much. At least not for me. There were parts I liked and I enjoyed much of it, but it wasn't an artistically inspiring place for me at all... but that's just me, maybe I'm weird that way.

BF: I must ask – where did the name for your website, Half Dead Unicorn come from?

AG: 3 am... like most things. Actually, I have a sort of known (and slightly blown out of proportion) love for unicorns (Unico was one of my favorite things growing up) and I was trying to figure out a name for my personal website so I sort of threw “Unicorn” in there. But like most things that get nicked by pop-culture and the hot-topic-like-media-machine unicorns, I though, were steadily on their way to follow monkeys, pirates, zombies, ninjas and the like... so “Half Dead” was added as a tongue in cheek way of me acknowledging that something I do love is likely to be co-opted to death and run into the ground and I still want to reference it anyway.

BF: Save Nerd Love is such an awesome idea - helping two comic lovers in a long distance relationship meet each other for the first time, at Comic Con no less. Care to explain its genesis and offer any updates? 

AG: Wow, thanks! Actually, It started because I know Carl  personally, he's an amazing artist, a wonderful and kind and thoroughly giving human being in every way. He's just one of those too-few and special people that you want to know in life. We were talking and he was telling me how he had started corresponding with this girl and they were really clicking but he had lost his job (he was a Manager for a comic shop that couldn't handle our economic plummeting, like many others) and was killing himself to scrape by and still selling off everything not nailed down on eBay in some hope of making connections with Molly.

She was doing the same, but it just didn't seem to be enough. They'd been talking for months and really getting on, but this was a hurdle they couldn't seem to manage. After Carl and I started talking and he told me about it, I don't know who came up with the idea, if it was me or him or both, but I started blasting the internet asking for help from anyone who could spare just a single dollar to try and make this happen. We figured out how much it would take to fly Molly out and since they're both huge comic fans, we set our goal for getting them together in time for San Diego Comic Con.

We worked our asses off, begged and pleaded and really humbled ourselves to try and make this happen, but it was for (in my eyes) a truly great and incredibly romantic cause. With some help from the likes of Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool we were able to get passed the haters and misguided peanut gallery who seemed to only want to get in the way and cause trouble. I know to some degree that some of these folks thought they were protecting others form being scammed, but really, this was obviously nothing like that (I think that's where Rich helped us most).

Luckily, I think most people understood what we were doing and did whatever they could to help out, which was amazing. I don't think any of us could say that we knew for sure that we'd be able to pull through, but damn if the community at large didn't come through like a champ. That was really, really awesome. No other word for it. We made our goal and got Molly down to SDCC in time to meet-up with Carl (think I still have pics on the site from it) and Rich verified the whole thing. It was really neat and even better just to be a part of something that simple and pure.

It wasn't easy though to just blast out a cry for help like that especially to a jaded online community that's on their own hard times for the most part but are also, I'm sure, deservedly tired of people always asking for hand-outs online. We thought this was a special case, and I still do. If we do it again for another couple or similar instance I would like to have a bit more prep-time to try and organize some better ways to ask for people's help financially with it or at least produce something in terms of a product that we can give them as a thank you because thanks are certainly in order. Not sure if we're going to do it again this year or not... but hey, you know what, if someone out there has a situation like Carl and Molly's and want to see about trying to make lightening strike twice for Nerd Love, hit me up through the site. Thanks again to everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who came through for Save Nerd Love 2009.

Ferrymen is released from Transfuzion Publishing on March 31.