As most everyone knows by now, there’s no hipper place to hang on ye olde intarwebbes than the HeavyInk forums. Why, just the other day, I stumbled into the bathroom and did a line while discussing Proust with Nelly Furtado. It’s just that cool.

Also the other day, Aaron Thomas Nelson stopped by to tell us a bit about his new book, Marlow. After uploading an awesome preview, it became clear that we needed to talk to this young man who was prepared to foist so much sequential goodness onto the universe.

And so, we did some lines, and we talked. Only half of that statement is true. Guess which one.

Based on the preview I’ve read, I’m getting the sense that Marlow is designed as a good old-fashioned genre mash-up. How do you describe the title?

That’s a really great question. When I was thinking about the storyline, I decided to re-read Thucydides’ “Peloponnesian Wars,” Virgil’s “Aeneid” and Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in order to find some inspiration as to how to tell the story. Ultimately, I felt like “Heart of Darkness” was most “in-line” with the concerns I wanted to address and the story I wanted to tell. Conrad uses first-person storytelling that I thought would work well in a comic book. I suppose the way I used the first-person storytelling gives the book a noirish flair-along with Mathew’s artwork-that gives it this cool, noirish, action-horror vibe to it. I didn’t approach the book thinking, “horror-plus-noir would be cool,” rather the storyline drove the style.

You seem to know a good bit of detail about the inner workings of espionage and weapons…are there any secrets about your involvement with Iran-Contra we should know about? Or are you just very skilled at making fictional “spy speak” sound legit?

(Laughs) I suppose my healthy diet of pulpy spy stories helped me with the “spy speak.” That and my employment with the CIA. Ahem.

How do you describe Marlow as a character? What’s your personal “hook” that gets you in the mindset of writing him?

Marlow’s this guy who’s been seriously screwed over and is dealing with it. His job is basically blackmail, and if he doesn’t play along, he turns into this horrible creature. From a character standpoint, he’s doing some pretty immoral things in order to survive, but, at the same time is in this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, which he’s struggling to find a way out of. Marlow’s a good guy in a bad situation who’s trying to find a way out. That’s what interests me in the character.

Do you have a lot of the backstory worked out, in terms of Marlow’s origin and the company he works for? Is that something we’ll see revealed over the course of this series?

Yeah, the backstory is all worked out and is an integral part of the first Marlow book. The second book (that’s in progress as we speak) expands the backstory a bit more and should give the reader a broader understanding of Marlow.

I’m getting a heavy noir/crime influence from the dialogue and settings. Is that one of your influences, and if so, what are some touchstone works for you in that genre?

Well, I’m not trying to write a noir/crime story-which “Marlow” isn’t. I’d say that the noirish style just seems to fit the overall story. Horror noir it may be, but this is truly an action horror story. With that said, I suppose from the style of the narration in the story, I couldn’t help but draw on the styles found-ironically-in the Philip Marlowe television series, and Harrison Ford’s narration in “Blade Runner”.

Where did you find Mathew Reynolds? His pencils are amazing; I love the shading effects he uses to create depth of field.

We can all thank Dario Carrasco, Jr. for that. Dario was originally set to pencil the comic, but due to some personal reasons had to back out. Of course, in Dario’s usual professional manner, he didn’t just leave the project hanging, but went out and found Mathew Reynolds who just nailed the artwork. We actually included Dario’s original work in the back of the comic, and if you want to understand how artwork affects storytelling in comics, read Dario’s and compare it to Mathew’s. They both work extremely well, but the styles create a different impact on the reader. It really blew my mind when I saw the two side-by-side. (Laughs)

What’s the road that led you to comics writing?

It was a dark and stormy night. (Laughs) Seriously, I actually started out writing poetry and essays, and decided that I had some stories I wanted to tell. Comics provided, in my opinion, the best medium for telling those stories, so I started learning how sequential art worked and began writing. I’ve always loved comics, so being able to write them is a labor well loved.