Awakening author Nick Tapalansky talks comics, zombies and zombie comics with The Nerdy Bird. Plus, Mexican brothels?!
Way back in 1994 The Cranberries posed the question, “What’s in your head?” They were also kind enough to give us the answer: Zombies! Yesterday I brought you the review of Awakening - Volume 1 from Archaia Comics, today I dig deep into the recesses of Tapalansky’s head and find, thankfully, he can still be counted among the living. Alex Eckman-Lawn, his artist? Maybe not so much.
Check out what Tapalansky had to say about the sad state of the zombie world today, Awakening’s time out and what he would do if zombies ever attacked. He’s got the most original answer I’ve ever heard.
Girls Entertainment Network: Ok, I’m gonna start you off with an easy one. When did you first start reading comics? What are some of your all-time favorites? What are you reading now?
Nick Tapalansky: That’s totally more than one, Jill. Nice try. I should’ve known you’d try to pull something like this. I’ve had enough of your shenanigans! Why, I…I…Stop looking at me like that! Alright, alright, I’ll bow to your inquisition. My earliest memory of “reading” a comic is around four-years old and they were alllll tattered copies of various Spider-Man books. I even had a wind-up swimming Spidey that I’m still pretty bitter about losing. Baths haven’t been the same since.
All-time faves are easy – Bone, Starman (James Robinson’s run), Swamp Thing (Alan Moore’s run), Y: The Last Man, New X-Men (Grant Morrison’s run)… And that’s just the starters.
I’m all over the place with what I’m reading now – I’m catching up on the new Immortal Iron Fist and really digging it, although rumor has it that it’s been cancelled which is just stupid. Perhapanauts is awesome, Fell is great when it comes out, Chew is big fun, Ultimate Spider-Man hasn’t missed a beat, The Complete Dracula is fantastic, Grant Morrison’s Batman work is amazing, and Umbrella Academy still finds ways to impress me every time I read it. Oh, and Alex just got me started on some new book called Hellboy that’s pretty cool. I think it could be one to watch. That Mignola kid could go far if he sticks with it.
GEN: You’re fairly new to the comic scene, what made you leap from fan to creator?
Tapalansky: Truthfully? Not being able to write books when I was younger. True story. All through high school I knew I was a writer. It was my schtick, you know? Still, when I graduating I was still writing like a high school kid – good ideas, horrid prose. Embarrassing stuff haunts my hard drive to this day. The more I forced it, the worse I felt about it. Then I started to look at it, analyze it, and noticed something: it wasn’t bad writing, everything was just kind of cold and very script-like. That’s when it dawned on me – why not try writing a script instead? Voila.
GEN: Why zombies?
Tapalansky: Awakening was borne out of a frustration with the glut of repetitive zombie fiction in the wake of successful genre pieces like The Walking Dead, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and even 28 Days Later (not technically a zombie movie but it’s certainly culpable in the revival of the genre in pop culture). Once those three hit, and hit big, the copycats started coming out of the woodworks. All I could think was, “Why are they all the same? Sure, they’re not bad at what they’re doing (most of them, anyway) but still, they’re all the same!”
Before I knew it, Awakening was being written with one goal in mind: to explore the zombie genre under a different set of circumstances and from a new perspective. I guess like any good horror creature, the zombie is relatable – if you look at the classic monsters, your Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, and so on, they’re all just one bad situation removed from ourselves. At some point they were all normal people and, at times, they even successfully masquerade as such still. You can see yourself or somebody you know in them pretty easily. And if it’s easy to do with those guys, it’s even easier to think of everybody you know as a shambling, rotting corpse. That kind of paranoia, disbelief, and fear is important in Awakening. It leads to the fun existential bits.
GEN: Awakening is sneaky. If you didn’t know picking it up it was a zombie tale it might take you a while to figure out that’s what’s really going on, kind of like the characters in the story itself. Is this a book for the intellectual zombie lovers out there?
Tapalansky: Haha! I’d like to think it’s accessible to anybody, but it’s definitely not your typical run-and-gun bid for survival with five stereotyped strangers. I think a lot of people say this to try and set books apart but, honestly, this book is more about the characters, the mystery, and the city than it is about zombies. It’s about how these people, from their different walks of life, view what appears to be happening to their city as weeks turn to months and the death toll rises. It’s about them trying to understand and overcome this situation while also reconciling their own past mistakes and shortcomings in order to face what’s happening. Between the recently released Volume One and the forthcoming Volume Two we follow the city of Park Falls, and its citizens, for a full year as the situation slowly escalates. There’s no massive uprising where the odds are immediately turned in favor of a shambling horde. We, instead, spend most of our time with a down-on-his-luck private detective trying to get his arms around some insane information.
The short answer is that it’s a “zombie noir” and, I hope at least, it’s something any fan of horror or mystery genre stuff can enjoy as a unique and fresh take the subject matter.
GEN: What makes the zombies in Awakening different from all the other flesh-eaters we’ve seen before?
Tapalansky: The nature of what’s happening in Park Falls certainly doesn’t look like a typical zombie outbreak, that’s for sure. People are turning up dead, viciously eviscerated and the only witness claims it was a zombie. Sounds ridiculous, but then you start looking at some other, seemingly unrelated incidents: a rise in the murder rate, subtle but perceptible, and a handful of missing persons. Thing is, these murdered folks’ bodies aren’t getting back up. Whatever this is, it’s not spreading the way we’ve been trained by pop culture to expect it to. And those who appear to be afflicted are all different, almost animal like – some are terrified of people while others seem to stalk prey. Another might just observe…And like I said, there aren’t many of them, at least not yet…
GEN: Alex Eckman-Lawn is your artist on Awakening. Did you two know each other before or did you seek him out specifically for the job?
Tapalansky: Alex was a great find in a brothel in Mexico. He was working off a debt and I needed some warm company. Like Pretty Woman before us, ours is a story of true love in the most unlikely of circumstances.
He’s the hooker. Just so we’re clear.
GEN: The art in the book is very non-traditional. Did you know right off the bat that’s what you wanted or did it come out of collaboration with Alex?
Tapalansky: Hands down, without question, it was exactly what I had in mind for the book. Seeing his work was like seeing it already alive, which was almost euphoric. The best part is, he gets it, you know? He understands the book and loves it as much as I do.
GEN: Alex vs. Zombie. Who’d win?
Tapalansky: Alex is made up of mostly mechanical parts ever since he swore off sleeping, so I’d say Alex by a gear shaft.
GEN: Awakening hit a bit of a snag last year when Archaia went through it’s restructuring, only three chapters had been published. What was that like for you as it’s writer? Were you worried the rest of your story might not see the light of day?
Tapalansky: It was absolutely terrifying for us, I think. We had already finished the fourth and fifth issues, and the supplemental material for the hardcover, when the news hit and we shit ourselves. This was our first book, we’d built some good momentum and then BAM! Screeching halt. Now what, right?
As it turns out, patience worked out well (I hear it’s a virtue) and, once Archaia pulled it together, we were rewarded with the book we’d been staring at on the computer as PDF for over a year. I can’t even tell you how happy seeing that book made me. Archaia puts together really nice hardcovers and it’s, hands down, the best way to check out the story.
GEN: It was announced earlier this week that Alex and yourself are going to embark on a Halloween signing tour. Whose idea was that and can we expect any zombies to show up?
Tapalansky: I HOPE people come out to these things in costume. I really want to see some zombies or, better, a Derrick, Cynthia, Sandra, or Daniel. That’d be AMAZING!
I guess I can take the blame on this one. It started as something simple I wanted to do, kind of an “Awakening Day” focus where we’d encourage everybody who hadn’t checked the book out yet to pick it up on that day and there’d be some kind of exclusive involved for doing it. In thinking about it though, that didn’t seem fair to people who already picked the book up. And then I started thinking about all the comic shops who’ve supported us, and how we did such a cool promo with DCBS when the book was available for pre-order and were able to include an exclusive signed print with every order through them.
That’s when it all started coming together. This was bigger than a one-day focus, this was a month-long event where people who’d been waiting to try out the book and those who already had it could get some really cool stuff just by coming out to see us or dropping us an email. Everybody who comes out to one of the four signings and either buys a copy of the book or brings one to be signed not only gets an exclusive, signed print created just for the tour but by giving us their email address they’ll also gain access to another exclusive – the first chapter of Volume Two online.
Not to fear though, zombie fans – if you can’t make it to the signings you can still get access to the online chapter just be dropping us an email! Info is in the full press release here.
GEN: Recently, on the comic’s Twitter feed you mentioned some “awesome news” you weren’t able to share yet. Care to share it with us?
Tapalansky: I wish I could! I can tell you that it’s not Awakening-related, though it IS something about Alex and I. It’ll probably be one of the first things you’ll see from us that’s non-Awakening, unless our two-part Perhapanauts back-up story beats it to stores this spring. It’s something we’re both pumped about though… Ask me again in a week!
GEN: Sadly, Awakening was never meant to go on forever. The story will conclude with Volume 2. When can fans expect to see that?
Tapalansky: Alex is plowing through it as we speak – literally. I just saw a GORGEOUS page that everyone who participates in our Halloween tour will get to salivate over on Halloween morning since it just HAPPENS to be part of the first chapter. Right now we’re right on track for a late summer 2010 release, just nine or ten short months from now.
GEN: One last question. Zombies attack. What do you do?
Tapalansky: Call Max Brooks. Failing that, get to high ground and pee on them. It won’t hurt ‘em, but it’ll be gratifying. Bastards.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I’m not sure whipping out your peemaker in the midst of a zombie apocalypse is really all that safe…
September 28th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Max Brooks is the man! Can you give me his number, Nick?