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@’s by LUCID Writer
Michael McMillian!
Hey folks, Ambush Bug with an interview with writer Michael McMillian, who many would know from his role as the white suited Church of the Light preacher, Steve Newlin (you know the one who got shot with the paintball in the forehead?) on HBO’s TRUE BLOOD, but he’s also a pretty fine writer. McMillian is part of the creative force that is Before the Door (a production company that partnered with Archaia last year). LUCID was one of Before the Door and Archaia’s first collaborations and the first collected trade was released last week. I had a chance to geek out with Michael about LUCID, TRUE BLOOD, and even Spider-Man. Here’s what he had to say…AMBUSH BUG (BUG): So tell me a little bit about LUCID.
MICHAEL MCMILLIAN (MM): LUCID is a four issue limited series that takes place in a parallel universe where every major world power has this secret agent working behind the scenes who’s trained in magic and mysticism and sorcery. Our lead character is this secret agent named Mathew Dee who is a descendant of John Dee, who was Queen Elizabeth the First’s court magician back in the 16th century. So even though this world is purely fictional and based in sci-fi and fantasy, I’m taking elements from history and sort of drawing them into this universe.
BUG: It sounds like a really cool concept. You said the first volume is out right now; it’s available right now. What has the feedback been like for it?
MM: So far it’s been really good, I have to say. We kind of have the beginnings of a cult hit I think. (Laughs) We haven’t gotten a whole lot of mainstream coverage yet, so I’m really excited to talk to you, but the reviews that have been online have been really positive. The feedback I’ve been getting from readers and TRUE BLOOD fans have been really positive. I’m excited about it, because even though it’s just four issues, the world is designed to live on and go for a while. So I’m really happy with it so far and we will see, you know? It’s tough getting a comic off the ground really, but I’ve had sort of good luck with it so far.
BUG: Good. I know that Archaia has been moving towards doing a lot of graphic novels and this is coming out in single issues, then collected into a trade?MM: I’m actually excited that I get to do a limited series and the way I designed it was that each individual issue would sort of stand alone. I grew up reading comics. I’ve been a big comic fan for a long time and I’ve sort of gotten a little weary of reading ongoing series or miniseries that I know are going to be collected later. I want a reason to come back every month instead of just waiting for the trade. If people want to wait for the trade for LUCID, that’s okay too.
BUG: That’s kind of my thoughts exactly. I’m sick of reading a first issue that sounds like the first fifteen minutes of a movie where nothing really happens.
MM: Yeah, exactly. At first I think, especially the first issue of LUCID may feel like it’s packed with a lot of stuff, but that’s on purpose. Each issue is sort of designed to be a single mission that Mathew Dee is on, but they are all linked together by a subplot and there is a cliffhanger at the end of each episode or each issue much in the way that there is a cliffhanger in a lot of good serialized TV shows. I hope that people will enjoy it as a single issue format and then read the collection to get a whole other experience out of it.
BUG: I’m a huge supporter of that type of writing.
MM: I just miss that. That was my favorite thing about reading comics growing up, just looking forward from issue to issue, month to month, and I feel like…Archaia has been great in letting me take this approach with it, because ultimately it is four issues, it does have to tie together, it is a miniseries, but I just wanted to have as much fun and get as much in there as I could, but that’s what I loved about reading books as a kid. I think publishing has gotten maybe a little too cynical and sort of asking readers to wait eight months to complete one story, because they are just going to sell it as a trade anyway. I remember when four issues or six issues in a comic series meant that a really big storyline was happening and that’s just kind of standard procedure now.
BUG: What were some of your favorite ones as a kid?MM: Well the first comic I ever read was AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #305, by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane and when you are a third grade and you are picking up a Todd McFarlane SPIDER-MAN in 1988 like you are kind of hooked for life. So I’ve been a die hard and devoted Spider-man fan ever since, through good times and bad.
BUG: And there have been plenty of both.
MM: (Laughs) Yeah, I know I’m sort of like the battered housewife in that sense, but every now and then you remember why you love him, but more recently I think books like PLANETARY, Alan Moores’s ABC stuff, especially PROMETHEA and TOM STRONG had a really big impact on me. All of those books came out when I was in college and I’d kind of been growing sick of some of the other mainstream superhero stuff and I just feel like there was this great year with those books and POWERS and all of this stuff started to happen just left of mainstream, which are now the mainstream, but…so those are big influences with those writers in LUCID and I love Grant Morrison, I mean everything Grant Morrison does. I love his BATMAN run right now; it’s great. That’s a great series to go back and read back-to-back issues of and there’s a whole other level of meaning that comes out of it.
BUG: He definitely makes every issue count.
MM: Yeah, he does. Then when you go back and read it, you see something…if you read them collected; you find something new that you hadn’t in that month to month format and knowing that LUCID is going in that direction is kind of what I’m hoping to create too.
BUG: Let’s talk a little bit about Before the Door. I talked with the writer of MR. MURDER yesterday.
MM: Yeah, Victor Quinaz.
BUG: Yeah, and I guess you guys have been good friends for some time.MM: Yeah, this whole thing is…man, we all went to college together. (Laughs) Victor is a great guy and obviously the opportunity to do both MR. MURDER for Victor and LUCID for myself came out of Zach Quinto’s success with HEROES and STAR TREK. His business partners at Before The Door, Neil Dodson and Corey Moosa, and Victor and I all went to college together and when they started up Before The Door they knew I was a big comic fan, they knew I wrote, and they asked me to pitch them some ideas and I came in with a few and we picked LUCID and we ran with that and we found Archaia and so far it’s been great. There’s something really wonderful about working with guys that you trust and know whose taste, I mean they…admittedly Zach was not a big comic book reader and one of the things that I found really admirable about the way he’s gone about getting into the comic world is he’s not writing a comic book, he’s not “editing” I should say a comic book that’s starring himself. This isn’t a vanity project. I’m an actor as well and I don’t star in the book. When we got together I said “I want to make a comic that will stand on its own merits as a comic book” and they have really allowed me to do that. It’s been great.
BUG: So with LUCID you said you are not really…you are looking at the comics right now, is that something that you would like to do as a film at some point?
MM: I would love to see anything that I make, comic books, a screenplay, whatever. I could be really cool to see that be turned into a film, but literally with this process I have been writing it to be a comic. For example there’s stuff like the sigils that you see, all of our magic characters speak sigils instead of magic spells and it’s a device that I feel only works in a comic book and I don’t know how they would do this if they made a film out of it. They would have to do something else entirely.
BUG: That would be cool to do word balloons.
MM: Yeah, maybe there would be world balloons or maybe strange sounds or something and structurally the narrative…this isn’t an origin story, so this is by no means written as a screenplay in disguise. If and when a movie of LUCID would happen, which would be cool, whoever’s job it is to write that whether it’s mine or somebody else is going to have to rethink things a little bit for a movie.
BUG: You said you had written things before, have you ever written comics before?MM: No, this is my very first comic. Before this I wrote an episode of a TV show I worked on a couple of years ago called WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU for the WB and some short films, screenplays, but this is really where my heart is at. This is what I would love to be doing from here on out aside from the acting, writing comics.
BUG: They will kill me if I don’t ask some TRUE BLOOD stuff, is that okay?
MM: Yeah, please. Those two worlds blend so closely and I have a lot of TRUE BLOOD fans that have been coming out and picking up LUCID, so you know…
BUG: I was going to ask you about that. Have you gotten a lot of correspondence between TRUE BLOOD fans and the comic?
MM: You know it’s funny, because one of the cool things about working on a show that’s as popular as TRUE BLOOD and is as steeped in genre as it is, is it really draws upon the fandom that are into comics and something like the New York Comic Con, so there’s been a huge crossover and I have to say a lot of the TRUE BLOOD fansites have picked up on LUCID and have spread the word about it and I really appreciate the fans out there. We’ve got…I think as a show we take good care of our fans and our fans seem to take good care of us, you know? It’s a really nice relationship.
BUG: So what’s it like being kind of like a modern day Van Helsing?
MM: It’s like a really egotistical and lame Van Helsing. It’s so much fun. That character is so great. It started with what Charlaine Harris wrote in the books and then what Alan Ball and the team of writers made him into. It’s just so much fun. He’s a great character and again I think it’s an example of Steve kind of plays a role in that world of a comic book villain who I think has a lot more dimension to him than just a pompadour in a white suit and cowboy boots. The thing that I found fascinating about playing Steve Newland is that in many ways he’s right. He’s using hate to spread his message which is not okay and obviously hurting a lot of people and innocent people in the process, but the guy’s anger is real and his family…I thought for sure that his father being murdered, his family being murdered by vampires would have ended up being a hoax, but I thought it was cool that they really…those vampires in Dallas that we were hoping would save Godrick in season two, they killed his family you know…
BUG: You had a huge role in season two and in the second run you were still there, there was like a presence and everything for the next season is there going to be more?MM: I hope so. I think with the human vampire relations being what they are at the end of season three and with Steve hawking shotguns in your local Sears you know, there’s a good chance that we will see him again. I’m speculating right now and I think he plays an important role in that show being the human anti-vampire voice, so so far he’s been in every season, so hopefully he will be back in season four.
BUG: It’s getting to be in that series that there aren’t too many humans left, maybe they are witches or vampires or demons or werewolves or whatever, so it’s good to see just the humans too.
MM: Exactly. (Laughs)
BUG: So do you have anything else planned from Before The Door with Archaia?
MM: I’m talking to Before The Door about our next project. LUCID has taken a lot of focus and just getting it off the ground and getting it to where we wanted it to be and we are still in the process too, the artwork is still coming in for issue four and as the artwork comes in I do little tweaks here and there with the dialogue and the script, mostly cutting down a lot…you’ll see as the series goes I learn to trim dialog more and more. But in the meantime I’m working on a graphic novel that a friend of mine from back home in Kansas City is illustrating called THE INDIAN AND THE BANDIT which is sort of a step in the opposite direction of LUCID. It’s all about being fifth graders in the fall of 1989, so it’s sort of this nostalgia piece about the last year of childhood and the last year of having that innocent American boyhood experience before you grow up and other things like girls and really shitty schoolwork kicks in and you start thinking about the future and you forget about playing with toys which a lot of us haven’t, especially readers of Ain’t It Cool including myself, so I’m working on that right now.
BUG: Is that going to be through Archaia?
MM: It’s not through Archaia and it’s not through Before The Door, but it’s through a big publisher and I’m really, really excited about it. I’d love to talk about it right now, but I can’t unfortunately. I’m bound by secrecy.
BUG: Well best of luck. It’s good to see LUCID. It seems kind of like…they described it as a HARRY POTTER kind of meets spies…
MM: Yeah, it’s sort of a JAMES BOND meets a post adolescent Harry Potter with a blend of magical history and just pop fantasy action. To me it’s a bit of a rock and roll book and this first four issue miniseries is kind of like LUCID’s EP. I do want to mention too that our artist is this fantastic illustrator named Anna Wieszczyk. She’s 20 years old and lives in Poland. She’s a Polish arts student and she’s just been knocking it out. She’s got a really wonderful style that sort of blend anime and for me Victorian fairytale illustration. Everyone who has come through and looked at the book has commented on how cool her illustrations are.BUG: It looks really good. Has she done anything before?
MM: She had done a little bit of work prior to this in an anthology, the name of it escapes me, but this is really her first big debut work, though we will see. (Laughs) It depends on if we really take off or not, but I love it and she gets better and better with each issue.
BUG: It looks great.
MM: That’s my hope. I mean it’s just a comic that I want people to sit down and read and have a fun time getting into. I’m not trying to get super deep or too dark or violent. I think it’s the escapist comic that I would want to pick up on the racks and just sit down and read on a Saturday afternoon.
BUG: It’s good to see that you didn’t go the easy route and go and do a vampire story or comic. It’s good to see it’s something different.
MM: Yeah, I was going to do a secret agent who was a vampire, but I went “You know what? Maybe I’ll just make it magical.” No, no no…yeah, I didn’t…I’ve always been into magic and the occult and the paranormal, so working on something like TRUE BLOOD was fun for that reason, but I’ve always had my mind on my first comic being centered around magic and it’s been a fun challenge. You know it’s always hard to establish the rules of magic in a fictional universe and even though there’s a little bit of this that’s based in stuff that I’ve read, as the series progresses you will see that the way the magic works in this world is sort of it’s own.
BUG: Did you consult Alan Moore at all about his rules of magick?
[Both Laugh]
MM: Oh yeah, me and Alan Moore…he loves TRUE BLOOD, so we are on a first name basis. (Laughs) No, I mean I had a lot of background in reading PROMETHEA and Grant Morrison’s stuff and yeah I’m sure Alan Moore would read this and be like “What is this guy trying to do here?” But you know…he actually summons demons, I only write about it.BUG: That’s cool.
MM: That’s the next step is I’ve got to grow out a big beard. When you see me next year I’m going to have a silver skull ring and a big beard… I’m not even going to be at conventions, I wouldn’t be able to handle that anymore.
BUG: You’ll be like out front or something sleeping on the sidewalk.
MM: Exactly, I’m going to be like a real urban magician. Maybe one day, I don’t know. Maybe when I turn 40 I will proclaim myself to be a magician and summon Astaroth or something.
BUG: Well thanks a lot for your time. Good luck with LUCID.
MM: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
BUG: Look for LUCID Vol.1 hardcover from Archaia and Before the Door in stores now! It’s a really fun and creative comic!
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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Special thanks to Muldoon for transcription.
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
