Broken Frontier

This is an Inter-Review—a review and an interview in one!

Today we speak with rising-star scrivener Dwight L. MacPherson and artist Worth  Gowell, the team behind the new all-ages mystery adventure book, Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits!  Volume 1 was released August 6^th by Viper Comics for a $9.95 cover price, and can be ordered now at Amazon.com.

And be sure to sample the free 22-page preview (that's a 7mb PDF download link) of the GN!

Broken Frontier Review: In an attempt to revivify the intellectually-engaging mystery serial for the younger reader, writer Dwight MacPherson—after being asked by his artistic collaborator, Worth Gowell: “What did 12-year old Ehrick Weiss [Harry Houdini] do for a year when he ran away from home to join the circus?”—concocted a pretty darn near perfect, high-concept pitch to accomplish this. His answer: young Houdini might have teamed-up with other child-aged carnie folk and formed a gang of amateur sleuths, who solve mysteries for the flat price of one silver dollar! So Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits was born, originally serialized in 22 one-page installments on The Chemistry Set website, those pages were later collected in the 2008 Free Comic Book Day issue from Viper Comics, and now, finally, the whole 96-page epic is released in the Volume 1 Graphic Novel, again from class-act Viper.

In the opening pages, Houdini and Co. are approached by a young girl whose daddy has gone missing, but not before he left behind a mysterious map and a watch with an ominous word inscribed upon its back. In short order, even though they never really have handled a missing persons gig before, Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits are on the case!  There’s Lydia, the snake-charming girl with her huge pet boa constrictor; the legless, broad-armed Hans; and the two-headed boy comprised of the sympathetic, sensitive head called Jacques, and the tough and volatile head named Joe.

The group is, on the whole, wonderfully balanced in disposition and tendency, a classic mesh of brave and cowardly…er…I mean “cautious”, of cool intellect and hot-tempered rashness, reminiscent of the Scooby Doo gang.  It’s fast-paced all-ages fare, with a touch of history and lessons learned.  Anyone familiar with The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and (to some extent) the unforgettable Encyclopedia Brown, will be on instantly familiar ground.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Hello, Mr. MacPherson!  Mr. Gowell!  Welcome and salud!  Looking to the beginnings of Kid Houdini, and the fact that you, Dwight, wanted to pen a new mystery book for young readers, did the two of you come together first before deciding on the project?  Or was the project simply “a new mystery adventure for kids”, but you didn’t yet know the precise protagonist, not until Worth’s Houdini suggestion?

DWIGHT MACPHERSON: Are you kidding me? I can’t remember what I did five minutes ago! [laughs] No, in all seriousness, I first came across Worth’s work on drunkduck.com. His webcomic, Small Wonder, was hosted there before he moved over to Viper Comics’ site. Anyway, I really dug his work, so I contacted him to see if he’d like to collaborate on a project. Worth took pity on me and said “Sure, what ya got,” so I showed him a pitch for an all-ages mystery book titled The Silver Dollar Gang. It was my intention to create a new Hardy Boys or Sherlock Holmes for my kids while keeping with the old sensibilities.

Anyway, after Worth mulled the idea over a bit, he suggested we add a young Houdini to the mix. To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea at first. I had already done a horror comic called Abra Cadaver: The Afterlife Adventures of Harry Houdini , so I was afraid readers would say “Hey—he’s already done a Houdini comic!” After Worth used his magical silver dollar to hypnotize me, I folded like a finger puppet and Kid Houdini became their leader. As for the young circus “freaks,” it was Worth who suggested... well, why don’t we let him tell you what he suggested? [laughs]

WORTH GOWELL: We both were fans of each other’s work and wanted to collaborate on an all-ages project. The original concept was a gang of kids who solved mysteries and the leader had a coin that was originally owned by Houdini. So, I traveled up to Appleton, Wisconsin, to tour the Houdini museum for research. I stumbled upon the story of Houdini running away to join the circus and thought: “ Hey, what if it’s Houdini who is the main character, and his gang is a bunch of circus misfits—a la Todd Browning’s Freaks?”

Dwight liked the idea and we ran with it.

BF: How were the individual Silver Dollar Misfits crafted?  Were they sketches first, later given personalities and place, or vice versa?

DM: Worth came up with the character designs first. After he drew them up, I created character profiles for each of them. I don’t believe I ever showed them to Worth, but I kept them so I was sure to write each character according to his or her profile.

WG: Yes, they’re in a vault somewhere. No one can get at them.

BF: And how did the story go from an online webcomic to a FCBD Edition comic, to a full GN?

DM: If memory serves... Viper Publisher Jessie Garza saw the Kid Houdini webcomic and contacted me about it. I pitched the book to him and he showed it to Jason Burns. They both loved it and Jessie suggested that they use the first chapter of the book in Viper’s Free Comic Book Day issue, and then release the story as a graphic novel a couple months later. Worth and I were pretty excited with the prospect of having a FCBD book, so we signed on. Is that correct, Worth? Or at least close? [laughs]

WG:  Yes, Viper had signed me on about a year ago, when they decided to expand their stable of webcomics. I think in one of my postings on my microsite I had mentioned Kid Houdini, and this caught Jessie’s attention—who also happened to be looking for an all-ages project. Timing is everything.

BF Review: The primary plot inside this first Volume of the series focuses on the Misfits’ search for clues on the whereabouts of the little girl’s father. This leads to danger after danger, and soon the local law is after them, and secrets within secrets stand to be revealed.  It’s one nicely complex and layered little yarn. MacPherson keeps the script breezy and the pace steadily whisking along, even through the unavoidable segments of pure exposition and backstory. 

He even finds time for comedic intervals and scenes to establish a handful of  adult circus denizens, all of which have little to do with the central mystery at hand, but never once does the experience seem a sluggish one, never does the action drag or seem at a standstill, even when, frankly, interestingly, and in retrospect, there are whole sections where the story literally comes to precisely that—it veers off for a quick slice of slapstick or momentary character development.

As a children’s book, Kid Houdini succeeds on all counts, charged by a fanciful script and concept, going so far as to grant Harry Houdini literal Harry-Potter-like magical powers, which then propels the goings-on into the vastly more “in vogue” world of true-blue fantasy. The action—which can also be considered the “violence” of the piece—never turns scary or graphic or even threatening, beyond the general, maniacal, fist-shaking, I’m-gonna-get-you-nosey-kids! type of peril. There’s a scene or two spiced by a slightly greater menace, before the danger is fully understood and therefore this uncertainty garners a touch more terror, but mostly, the book is well-behaved and keeps its tone light and the mystery deep.

As a book for anyone, including adults, the mystery is certainly engaging, and the characters could charm the pants off the snootiest old coot who wouldn’t be caught dead with a comic let alone a kid’s comic, but the dialogue, action, and character interaction is, for the obvious reasons, relatively unsophisticated. There isn’t any camouflaged adult humor a la Looney Tunes or moments where the danger suddenly spikes.  Kid Houdini is a rock-steady book in terms of tone and appearance, which some will dig and some won’t, but as a young reader’s book, or a GN to read with a young reader, it’s disgustingly faultless.

BF: Was writing a book for younger readers a challenge for you, Dwight? Did it take a certain focus to stick to the style of the work, or was this a natural thing to dive into for you?

DM : To be honest, it was quite easy. As a single father of three great little boys, I am constantly interacting with and listening to them. Since my divorce—about 4 years ago—it’s just been me and them, so I spend most of my days interacting with three kids. In light of this, it was pretty natural to sit down and write a book that featured savvy, playful and intelligent children—like my own kids.  

BF: What would either of you say are some of the best examples of all-ages or young reader-oriented comics that are published today?

DM: Jeff Smith’s Bone is the obvious answer, but I would also include David Peterson’s Mouse Guard and Mike Bullock’s Lions, Tigers and Bears. Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet is fantastic—and speaking of Kibuishi, his Flight anthologies are wonderful, too. Last but not least, I think Mike Kunkel’s Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam is sensational. It’s a continuation of Jeff Smith’s Shazam! The Monster of Society of Evil, which was also pretty wonderful.

WG: I was going to mention Mike Kunkel, as well. I loved his comic series, Herobear and  the Kid. That one caught my eye when I went to the local comic book store looking for age-appropriate comics for my son. Jason Lethcoe’s Zoom’s Academy for the Super Gifted was another one. I just picked up Amulet. A great, nicely textured fable.

BF: On the subject of adult and teenage readers, what aspects of Kid Houdini do you hope will appeal?

DM:  Regardless of a reader’s age, I feel pretty confident in saying that we all enjoy a good mystery. What readers will find in Kid Houdini is a mystery with a loving dash of magic, humor, adventure—all the elements that make the “Harry Potter” franchise so popular with readers and viewers of all ages.

WG: And also tweaking the myth of Harry Houdini. We all know he was a great magician, escape artist, devotee of the supernatural, but he had to start somewhere. So, Kid Houdini is still learning the ropes—or, at least, to get out of them.

Be sure to join us tomorrow for part two of our Inter-Review with Dwight MacPherson and Worth Gowell and their new all ages GN, Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits.

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Volume One of Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits can be ordered now at Amazon.com for a cover price of $9.95

Be sure to sample the free 22-page preview (that link is a 7mb PDF download for Adobe Acrobat Reader) and also visit the websites of creators Dwight L. MacPhereson and artist Worth Gowell.