Our vibrant, manly love for Red 5 Comics and its products is well-documented here.
Today, we have an exclusive interview with Scott Chitwood, one of the founding fathers of Red 5 and a writer for the publisher as well. His Afterburn (co-written with Paul Ens) has recently been optioned for a film by Tobey Maguire for what we understand is roughly seventy six bagazillion dollars.
In spite of his wealth and power, Scott was remarkably down to earth. Read on, effendi.
Afterburn is written by the two founders of Red 5 Comics. How did the title’s creation evolve? Was this a story you hoped to tell when you founded the imprint, or did it come later after Red 5 had begun?
When Paul and I started Red 5 Comics, we always had the intention of creating some of the titles ourselves. After all, if we were going to build the sandbox, we wanted to play in it. Paul and I brainstormed over a number of story ideas and Afterburn stood out as one of the ideas with a lot of potential. I came up with the initial concept and a first draft of the story, then Paul and I took stabs at revisions after that. It was during that revision process that we started identifying the appealing parts of the story (like the mutant sharks) and expanding on them.
Genre fans are very familiar with the “post-apocalyptic” environment from many movies and comics. How did you approach the idea of “post-apocalyptic” from a fresh direction?
It actually didn’t start as a “post-apocalyptic” story idea. It started as an Indiana Jones idea. Back when I was a kid, I saw a National Geographic painting in an archeology book that showed the U.S. Capitol overgrown by forest and vegetation. I thought it would be interesting if Indiana Jones were raiding modern locations and treasures rather than ancient ruins and temples. The question was how to go about doing that.
One day I was walking through my living room and my wife had a Discovery Channel show on TV about solar flares. They were talking about what could potentially happen if a solar superflare hit the earth. They talked about electronics being wiped out, vegetation dying off, humans being bombarded by radiation, and other fun stuff. As soon as I heard that, I knew we had out apocalypse event for the story. The rest fell into place pretty quickly after that.
What’s your take on this world you’re developing? Are you telling one-off action stories set in this larger universe, or is there an overall larger tapestry you’re creating as well?
We set the story up to be ongoing if we wanted it to be. The initial story arc was 4 issues so that if it tanked we didn’t sink too much money in it. But the story would be set up so the characters could have further adventures if we wanted to go there. That was the beauty in cooking half the world – there are so many places you can have stories and so many treasures Jake and his team can go after. Throw in international politics, rival treasure hunters, and other cool stuff and the story potential is endless.
Visually, what’s influencing the creation of Afterburn? Are there other artists or books that have provided inspiration for the way Afterburn looks?
Since we were telling a cinematic story with a potentially real world approach, we were looking for more realistic artwork over stylized penciling. That’s why Wayne Nichols’ art really stood out. He does beautiful, detailed backgrounds as can be seen in the opening scenes of issue #1. When we first talked to him, we told him we were looking for a “Mad Max” and “Terminator” look to the post-apocalyptic environment. Everything needed to be dirty, worn, and beaten. We wanted to see skeletons and dead bodies on the ground where they dropped when the flare hit. We wanted to see fires and destruction where planes fell out of the skies and wildfires raged. You know, the good stuff.
What was much more difficult to zero in on were the mutants. We wrote the full script without ever really thinking about what they looked like. So when the time came to draw them in concept art, it took quite a bit of time to choose a look. We didn’t want X-Men mutants with powers, but we didn’t want “Total Recall” freaks either. We settled on a look that was still distinctly human, but modified by the effects of radiation. As a reader, the process behind creating a look of a character was something I definitely took for granted. Never again!
What does Matt Busch bring to the table as the cover illustrator? How has he helped develop the book and its following?
Matt Busch has been a friend of ours for a very long time. We’ve known him since the earliest days of running TheForce.Net. So when we started this comic company, we knew we wanted to use him. Afterburn was a natural fit for his talents. As you can see from the covers, his art is stunning. I’ve had the cover art with the shark displayed at conventions and I’ve seen people stop dead in their tracks when they’ve seen it. Kids yell out, “Shark!” There’s no question his artwork has gotten our title a lot of attention. In fact, it’s what caught the eye of our agent that helped get us our movie deal.
Tell me about the process of Afterburn being optioned for a feature film. Was it being shopped around for a while, or did the production company approach you guys?
Several groups were interested in the movie rights to Afterburn after having seen it mentioned on ComingSoon.Net, but the writer’s strike slowed progress on many talks to a complete standstill. Then one day in an LA comic shop, our soon-to-be agent saw a copy of Afterburn #1 on the store counter and checked it out. He saw the potential in the story and contacted us about shopping around the movie rights. When the writers strike stopped, the interest started up again. Ultimately Tobey Maguire, Relativity Media, and Neal Moritz won the bidding war.
So getting it optioned was a combination of having a good story idea, having professional looking artwork, and dumb luck.
Where’s the film’s production at right now? Any status updates?
It’s in pre-production. From our conversations with the production company they’re very excited about the project and moving it forward. They have some great ideas for the movie, and I definitely think it’s in good hands.
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