In Conversation with Ram V on Comics, Influences and Home

Ram V is one of the best writers working in comics today, currently writing Detective Comics (which I think is one of the best superhero comics on shelves, and maybe ever) and Dawnrunner. He’s also had various masterpieces under his belt already, such as The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, Grafity’s Wall, The Swamp Thing and These Savage Shores (my personal favourite)! Recently at SDCC, DC Comics announced that he’s going to be writing New Gods alongside Evan Cagle on art.

He’s also one of my favourite comic writers ever, and an inspiration truly, so getting to sit down and interview him a few months ago about his work, inspirations, as well as connections to home was an honor.

It’s a long one, so as per usual, sit down with a nice cup of coffee and dig in!

(This interview has been edited for clarity)

Zee: OK, so I think, before we start, it’s good to introduce myself. I’m from Bangladesh. That’s why I have a big connection to your work because I feel the same thing you do, about how your work is all about reclaiming our stories, reclaiming our history. That’s so important in so much of your work, especially in These Savage Shores. And so, to break the ice, I’d like to start with… 

What really got you into comics? For me, it was my mom showing me the first Spider-Man movie and then me buying the first Ultimate Spider-Man trade at a local book fair. That’s what started the domino. So for you, what was that one thing?

Ram V: I used to read comics as a kid in India, but it wasn’t DC/Marvel, it was Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, the European comics reprints that were available in India at the time. Then for the longest time, I didn’t read any comics. From about 13 onward I was told I had to read “proper books”. I didn’t have that childhood comic book love affair that a lot of creators, a lot of fans have.

You might say I rediscovered the joy of comics only after I was 19/20 and moved to the States to study chemical engineering. I was dating someone at the time, and she gifted me the first volume of Sandman for my 21st birthday, and I just devoured that book and it brought back all these memories of, “Oh yeah, comics can be really amazing.” I pretty much read everything Neil Gaiman had done after that. Then I discovered that he had been recommended to Karen Berger at Vertigo by Alan Moore. So, I read everything Alan Moore had done after that. Then I read somewhere that this young upstart British writer was criticizing Alan Moore’s work in Wizard Magazine. And I thought, “I wonder who that is.” So, I read everything Grant Morrison had done.

It was that lineage of really interesting Vertigo writers that came up around mid, late 80s. That vein of writing really brought me back to, “Oh, comics can be written well, and they can be enjoyed and they can be complex and interesting but also entertaining and bombastic.” I don’t know if that answers your question. So, it wasn’t a single moment for me. It was more of a return to it almost after a decade of not reading any comics.

That’s actually really interesting.

I think you could see it in my work. It’s very Vertigo-influenced. Anything that deviates from that is more of a contemporary branching out from me rather than going back to that old-school nostalgia feel of entertaining, punchy comics.

For sure. One of the things I talk about in regard to your Detective Comics run a lot with my friends is it’s obviously a Big Two book, but it feels so different. It doesn’t feel like your standard ‘capes about capes’ stuff. It is so different. That’s where I can see a lot of your influence because, like you said, a lot of your stuff is British comics, not cape stuff necessarily, and that’s interesting.

I also feel, even with the Big Two stuff, it must move somewhere, it has to move forward. It can’t just be what it was in the 90s. It can’t just be what it was in the 2000s. As creators, it’s part of your job to really bring your influences and yourself to the work. Hopefully that’s evident in everything I do. I am always very entertained by people saying, “I can’t imagine that the same person wrote Swamp Thing, Detective Comics, Justice League Dark, and Carnage.” But why would I repeat myself? It’s boring to do the same book four times. I would much rather do completely different things.

Speaking of your influences, what are your thoughts on the comics scene back in India? Did you read anything from that scene and what do you think of the industry there generally?

I wrote a comic called Aghori back in India which did quite well there, and I knew a lot of creators there. I read some of the books that had come out from Virgin Comics at the time, like Mukesh Singh, Grant Morrison’s 18 Days, but largely a lot of the books that came out just weren’t good. I felt like the writing was atrocious in places, or the art wasn’t really up to standard, or the production wasn’t up to standard, and I understand because it’s the symptom of a disorganized industry where people were making comics because they loved them but not necessarily thinking about how to make good comics.

I think that is another bigger symptom of people not valuing reading and art in India. Despite having such a huge population and a huge number of people who read English, the number of readers in India is lower than what I think it should be. It’s still seen as an elitist pastime or a hobby. Within that crowd, reading comics is considered a lowbrow thing to do. So, you end up having a very small niche, even though it’s in a very big country.

Because it’s so niche, I think it lacks organization, it lacks vision, it lacks foresight, but I think it has all the ingredients. Creators who love comics are there, readers who love comics are there, publishers who love comics are there. I think it just needs people to come in and say, “Okay, this is what a good comic looks like and we should make more of these and get professional letterers, pay them professional rates, get professional artists, pay them professional rates.” I think that very ground-up education is needed for comics to do well.

It’s similar in Bangladesh because there’s this company called Dhaka Comics that’s all about making Bengali comics. Every year we have a book fair back home, and when I was there, I used to go to their specific stall. Every year they’d have a brand new series with 5 issues. So, I’d buy them and read them, and go, “Wow, this is great! Then I go back the next year and there’s this new line.

There’s never the sense of organization, but even more so than that, if I go to grocery shops or even like the one comic shop we had back home, that market is just not there, and no one’s reading local comics. That makes me sad because I think a lot of it is similar to what we talk about in regard to American comics too, where they’re not really meaningful, they’re just cape stuff about capes. But there are some gems in there and I think it’s the same for us, where comics are looked at like a lowbrow thing and I think if we got some professionals, some people to really push, it could be something more.

On one level, yes, I agree that it would be nice if we had all these people doing all these nice and good things for comics. But also I think comics is by design a bit of a niche, insular medium. Much like the ground-level punk rock scene.

You get an amp, you have a guitar and you can pretend you can sing, and that’s it. All you need is a drummer and you’ve got a band. You can go out and you can sing your songs and you can play shows. It doesn’t need the big stage lighting. It doesn’t need the manager, it doesn’t need the six piece band. It doesn’t need the amazing sound system because it comes from a place of raw creativity. I think comics, some part of comics at least, should always feel like that.

It should always feel like, “I got a pen, I got paper, I got some staples. I can go make some photocopies. I’m good. I can make some comics.” In fact, I would say when people come to comics, so many of them come to comics now – I don’t know how the scene is in Bangladesh – but certainly in India, there are a lot of publishers who will say, “If I make a comic, I can then get it turned into a movie which can then turn into a franchise and I’ll be a zillionaire.” I’m not sure that goes anywhere.

Right, yeah. I mean, we’re seeing that today in American comics. That makes me sad because I’m into the medium for the medium and seeing these comics that are so very clearly meant to be adapted puts me off from the entire thing.

I don’t care what they’re meant to be. Just make them good. What they’re meant to be is a secondary question. What they are is a primary question and currently what they are needs to be interesting. Good, complex, exciting, you know.

You brought up that people ask how you wrote Swamp Thing and also Detective Comics and all these other books. As I was reading for the interview, I noticed that there’s that similar thematic beat of ‘reclaiming your past, your history’ or ‘breaking free from that history.’ How do you make sure that you’re always keeping it fresh rather than playing the same beats over and over again.

I think that these are common themes that you find in my books, but I don’t necessarily think that they’re what the book is about. I don’t think these have assurances about reclaiming your past, I think they are about losing it. I don’t think Detective is about reclaiming your past, or your stories, but it is about-

It’s about breaking free.

Maybe it’s about breaking free, but maybe it’s about reconfiguring, or perhaps thinking about how your future is more important and it doesn’t need to be coloured by your past all the time. So, these are part of the themes of the books because I think these are big existential questions that characters going through big existential conflicts tend to answer, but you can read Laila Starr or Grafity’s Wall and you won’t find that theme because those are quieter books. Those are happening closer to the ground, if you will. When you don’t have the big existential conflict, you tend not to have big existential questions. You tend to have deeper, smaller questions, but perhaps more meaningful ones.

Is there any reason as to why that’s the thematic core that you always come back to. Why is that something that speaks to you?

What I’m trying to say is that it might exist in my work, but I don’t necessarily think that I am drawn to it, or I lead to it. My work as it is read is a collaboration between you, the reader, and me, the creator. Perhaps the need to find that thematic consistency is more of a reader thing than a creator thing. Some parts of the creative experience and the reading experience need to be nebulous.

You don’t write a book to reverse engineer thematic consistency. The idea of reclaiming pasts or reclaiming stories might be something that finds its way into my work, but I don’t necessarily write it in. I’m writing the drama and writing the characters. These might be things that I gravitate towards because of who I am, and I don’t think it’s helpful for me to psychoanalyze my own writing.

That totally makes sense. Even now, right? Past your work, we’re seeing so many other kinds of stories, especially nowadays that are all about rebuilding on your past or like breaking free of those expectations, Across the Spider-Verse did that with Miles and canon events and breaking free. I don’t know if you’re super into video games, but the new Final Fantasy 7 games are also doing that. They’re also about building on your past. The Fabelmans, for example. Why do you think this is something we’re seeing a lot of now?

As a societal construct, it’s because society is going through change. I think it’s going through generational change. I mean, all of the things you mentioned are things that existed in the past and have a past. The Fabelmans is very clearly Spielberg’s nostalgia for his own past, and Spider-Verse obviously has the history of the Spider-Man comics and Miles Morales, and I think maybe it’s a nice and lovely thing, but I’m less interested by it for that reason, because it seems to be the symptom of a creative industry that is interested in mining the glories of its own past, or signaling that they are ready to move past it, but even in doing so is mired in nostalgia.

I’m more interested in people doing completely new things that don’t have a past, that are just making interesting things in the here and now. So, I think part of it is the world is going through turbulent times, socially, economically, politically. People like the comfort of looking back to their past as if it has some bearing or meaning for their future, when I believe in truth, it doesn’t. All you can do is face forward, step forward. You are defined by where you came from, but that must never overshadow your future.

Let’s talk about comics. Let’s start with The Vigil. It’s very clear that it’s been inspired by The Authority. It’s obviously not your next book, but what inspired that book, those power sets and those characters?

The power sets really are just products of me being entertained by them. I had the idea for quite some time, maybe 2014 or 2015. It’s something that was in the back of my head for a very long time and when it came to the We Are Legends imprint, Jessica Chen, who was the editor on the imprint and the book at the time, came to me and said, “Hey, I want you to do something with Indian characters that we can introduce into DCU because I think that’s a good thing.”

I said yes, but I didn’t want it to be a cliché. “Oh, an Indian character. Great. Let’s make him a magician or a Prince, or a God, or some vessel of some God, and let’s mire it in spiritual self-discovery, because that’s what India means, right? That’s what Indians do.” I was a little bit bored of that mythology, spiritualism, metaphysical-leaning narrative. And I said, “No, I want to do an espionage sci-fi thing that is set in India with Indian characters.”

The other thing that Jessica and DC wanted to know was, “How do we set it in the DCU?” And I immediately thought, “This needs to be like Planetary or Authority, closer to that WildStorm universe,” partly because I hadn’t done anything like that, even though I love those books. I hadn’t done anything in that vibe, and it felt new and fresh for me. So I said, “Cool. Let’s go with that.” It just fit, and connected themes between The Vigil and what Planetary was and what it already stood for. I think they already existed. It was just a matter of connecting those dots.

It really worked out! One of my favourite books from last year, actually. Are we seeing them again anytime soon?

I hope so. I don’t know if it will be soon, because there are no other Indian creators at DC (laughs), so I don’t know who will be writing them. But I’ve already got most of this year and a part of next year laid out in terms of the work that I’m doing, and I can only write so many books, so hopefully we’ll see them again. I would love to return to them, but it may take a little bit of time.

So, One Hand/Six Fingers. I read both issues and wow, congratulations! Great book. I read them back-to-back so that one page where both books finally intersect and then goes back to their own worlds is fantastic stuff.

Yeah, we do that in every issue. There’s always one scene where the narratives intersect and move past each other.

Oh that’s really cool. So, is working together on Detective why you and Dan Watters decided to work together or is it external to that?

No, Dan is one of my earliest friends in comics. Before I had made my first internationally published comic, I went to the Thought Bubble festival here in the UK in 2015. Dan and Caspar Wijngaard had just put out their first image book called Limbo, and I met Dan there, and I met Ryan O’Sullivan there, and a few months later, at another convention, I met Alex Paknadel. We realized that we had similar influences, similar ideas about the kind of stories that we wanted to tell. So, we got together and formed a studio. Dan’s from London as well. He’s very nearby and we’ve been part of the studio pretty much as long as I’ve been making comics. 

Part of the reason Dan and I collaborated on Detective is because he’s part of the studio. One Hand/Six Fingers probably germinated as a result of that rather than us collaborating on anything else.

What does that collaborative process look like? Are you two plotting at the same time or plotting different things and then merging it together?

I think there is a call and response element to it. I think the original idea came from me. I remember talking to Dan about it at 3:00 in the morning one day, saying, “Hey, I got this idea. We need to do this. It’s two books whose narratives twine with each other.” But I knew I wanted to write the detective side of it, and I told Dan, “Look, this is the pitch. You have to write the killer who doesn’t really know he’s a killer. How are you going to write that?” And I didn’t know what the plot was for that side of it, so I would write my first issue and about halfway through my first issue, Dan would start writing his first issue. So, it was in reaction to what I had already written, but also we would take notes from each other, so there was definitely an element of reacting to what the other person was.

That’s super interesting. So, before we go back to you and Dan once again, Dawnrunner, that’s next month. Really exciting. Have you had any influences going into it, both visually and narratively, or is this just an original idea?

Certainly visually. I’ve been a big fan of the mecha-kaiju genre, not in the way you might imagine. I don’t put Gundams together or own a lot of action figures, but one of my earliest memories is that in India, they used to have the black-and-white reruns of Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot (Giant Robo), which was a Japanese live action show with dated special effects.

But I loved it and so, I had an early affection for the big robot-fighting-monster genre, and then Power Rangers came along, and I think that had a mecha-kaiju element to it as well. Then I got into anime– Robotech, Grendizer, Evangelion, all of those. So, I’ve had a consistent affection for the medium, but I think narratively, the reason this book exists was me watching Pacific Rim and then a couple of weeks later I watched Arrival. And I thought, “What if that big mecha-kaiju genre thing had elements of this more intimate, inward-looking, psychological sci-fi?”

Once I started thinking in that direction, this story was almost there. I knew what the big mechanism was, and I don’t want to spoil it for readers when they get to the end of the issue, but you’ll see why this book is doing something different than being a big mecha-kaiju book.

Now, Detective Comics. Really excited to talk about this. What’s it been like writing it now that we’re near the end?

I have another four issues to write, and it’s been great. I started it because I wanted to do work that was long-form storytelling, slowly building the blocks of a grander narrative. I hadn’t done any work that was longer than 16-17 issues, at least not in the superhero genre. This was really an endeavor at doing that, so I started off with a very patient approach. I had my usual skeptics. People were saying, “What is this operatic thing? I don’t understand it.” Then it was really nice to see, about four or five issues in, that turnaround: “Oh, wait, actually, there’s something really interesting happening here. This book is doing something cool.”

Now it’s switched to people being hyperbolic with their praise. Maybe going too far the other way, but I love when that happens with readerships, because that means I did my job, that means I shook the status quo enough for people to be perturbed by it. I executed this story well enough for people to say, “Okay, I’m still hanging on to this. I’m still looking forward to turning the next page to see what happens,” and then I did it consistently enough for people to get to the end and feel comforted, think “I feel like I’m going to get a payoff. I feel like the story is going to do something interesting.”

I’m sure you will. I’m one of those people. You’ve seen my reviews. You know how much I gush about this book. Every week when I talk to my brother, I’m like, “You gotta read this!” And he’s like, “I will!” And so I buy the hardcovers so I can give them to him. In our house, he’s the Batman guy, he bought all of Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo Batman. That’s why I read Batman, and then I got into comics, but to that note, do you ever feel that weight of expectations, when you’re writing this book?

I used to be a chemical engineer before I started writing comics. I travelled to quite a few places. I travelled to Syria before the war began there. I’ve been to Iran. I’ve been to Indonesia, I’ve worked in inhospitable places. So, when I came to comics and people asked, “Oh, is it intimidating to write Batman?” No, it’s pretty intimidating to be chased in a desert at an oil dig because there is a government coup going on outside. Writing Batman, you take things in perspective. But writing has never felt like it was intimidating to me. I love writing. 

So when I sit down to write Batman, I love doing that. There’s never a sense of, “Oh my God. I’m writing Batman. What am I going to do?” There’s always a sense of, “I’m writing Batman. This is going to be cool.” So, because there’s that sense of just being in love with writing, while it’s cool for me to look back at it and think, “I’m writing the book that the company is named after. That’s pretty nice.” — it’s a hindsight thing, it’s an outside-of-writing thing. When I sit down in front of a blank screen and I start typing, it’s just joy for the most part.

Chip Zdarsky said the same thing in his newsletter and when I saw him in person. You’re on social media and he’s not, and how that’s helped him and how he’s having fun writing the book, but on that note actually, I’ve noticed since I do read both, there’s different executions obviously, but similar plot beats of both older Batmen past their prime, going through these things and now, that book’s dealing with the Joker, and with the recent Detective solicit, we might be seeing Batman with the Joker soon. Is that something that’s just a result of both of you having good creative processes or is that planned between you two? I assume the former.

It’s definitely not planned. But to an extent we’ve been filling each other in in terms of, “Hey, this is what I’m doing with this character,” and then Chip will say, “Hey, can I use this character later on?” “Yes, of course.” There’s always been this sense of, “Let’s have both books be aware of what’s happening, but they’re running in parallel.” They run adjacent to each other and that works. I find it curious. I didn’t know there was going to be an “I’m taken over by another entity” arc there when I was doing it here. I didn’t know there was going to be as much looking through Morrison’s run for threads to pull on, but we’ve both done that. Maybe it’s just the zeitgeist, maybe Chip and I are getting older and we’re just putting ourselves into the books.

Chip may kill me if I say that. (laughs) Maybe it’s just me.

Zee: It’s been great to read both in parallel, because even though they’re looking at similar inspirations, they’re doing different things.

To move further into the collaboration process, let’s start with Evan Cagle, you’re working with him on Dawnrunner. He’s been doing all the covers for Detective. One of the things that I remember from reading Watchmen was how they talk about how the cover is the first panel of the story. I see this especially with Cagle’s covers where you might not be directly aware of what the cover is referencing, but then you read the story and you go back and it’s like “Oh wow, this cover actually means something.” What’s that process like? Do you tell him, “This is what I’m doing,” or how does that work?

We tend to discuss what I’m going to be doing over the next few issues. Evan and I have a friendship that extends beyond comics. I’ve known him for a while. We started by working on Dawnrunner. I think we did a Catwoman issue together, too. He’s a lovely person. I talk to him very often, so we have a good connection.

Creatively, not only with Detective, but with all of my work, I prefer everything on the book to say something about the story, to be connected to the story, whether that’s a cover or design, or how the book is put together, or the format. Even if it’s two books, they have to be doing interesting things that are reflecting on each other. I’m a big believer in the idea that art extends outside of the object, and so everything around the object you make is also art, and so covers certainly fall into that category. I think having that sort of conversation and connection with the person doing the covers on the run 100% makes a huge difference.

I always think about the cover of Detective #1062. I wrote like a whole paragraph on it and how it reflects on the issue, it’s so cool. There’s so many great covers out there, but with Detective’s especially, it pops out and it’s one of those covers where after I’m done reading, I look back at the cover. That’s such a cool experience that I don’t get from other books and that’s always awesome.

Moving forward, Detective has had so many artists right from Rafael Albuquerque to Jason Shawn Alexander and so many people in the middle. When you’re writing the book, do you maintain the same style in terms of script, or do you change it for the artist?

I write for my artists, so it becomes very difficult sometimes when artists come on board and then they need to leave, or say “I can’t do more than this issue. Sorry, I know I was going to,” and it always sends me into a bit of a panic, because I’m thinking, “No, but I wrote the next issue for you.”

Usually, then I have to go in and make edits and changes, so I tend to script for my artists. I have a very good sense of visualizing things in my head, so I can imagine what my panels are going to look like in somebody’s style, and I can imagine it quite vividly. And so, when I write, I write with that imagination and then when that changes it throws me off. It’s also why you’ll see I tend to prefer to work on projects with people that I have a relationship with, because I know that I can call them, I can talk to them and they’re going to be with me through this journey of making this book.

To be fair, a lot of the artists on the book have been amazing to work with and collaborate with. Rafael was great, Ivan Reis was great, Jason was great. It’s been a wonderful collaborative experience with all of them. But yes, I certainly get put into a panic when we don’t know who’s drawing the next issue.

If it helps, we as readers certainly don’t see that because, even though they’re stylistically different, there’s some sense of consistency where we can go “Oh, this is Detective.” 

I think artists are good and professional enough to know that they are drawing part of a run and so I’m sure they do their homework in terms of, “Okay, how does this thing look and what do I need to do to fit into it?”

I’m still going to complain, yeah. (laughs)

That’s totally fair. Speaking of Jason Shawn Alexander, actually, Outlaw was biweekly, is that something that you chose by design?

Yeah, it was part of my original pitch. I very much wanted to do an intermezzo event that was supposed to be an intermission. But really, the moment you say intermission people will say, “Oh, so I’m supposed to take a break and go away and do something else.” So, I had to also be doubly sure that people would stay and be here for that event. 

Initially, I was going to suggest a weekly event, but I think that might have been too much. So we went biweekly. That was very much part of the pitch.

Zee: Well, there’s another similarity because Zdarsky just finished his weekly Joker story.

There you go. We’re really just the same person.

Zee: In terms of story, the myths, right? Talia telling the myths and how those are paralleling our protagonists in their own way, but also as you read, you get the sense of like, “Oh, maybe they will not continue the cycle but will break it and own their own future”. The thing is if you look at other superhero books, usually, these books will maybe use a legacy character or the character’s own history, but you decided to go back and create a different kind of history. So, what made you want to do that specifically instead of sticking to “tradition”, in a sense?

I mean, I don’t really know tradition. I don’t really think of tradition. So, it wasn’t really a choice that was connected in any way to what had come before. But I knew that the entire run was really on one level about the different ways in which people perceive Batman as a mythology. 

There’s the Batman fan on the streets of Gotham — I don’t mean the readers, but I mean someone on the streets of Gotham who loves Batman. That person is going to think, “Of course, Batman’s always going to win. Batman’s always going to succeed.” Then there’s the average Gotham villain who’s going to think, “He’s not human. He’s part of the shadows. He’s part of the Gotham night.”

So, there’s that side of fearsome mythology to it. There is the mythology that Batman chooses to create himself when he puts on the costume. “Is he man? Is he bat? Is he human? Is he superpowered?” and because all of these are expectations, people tend to forget that it’s a human being that has to play to all of these expectations, and the toll that it takes on them.

It made sense to investigate what was essentially a story of a man questioning if he can live up to his own myth, and make him go through somebody else’s myth and discover himself in that way. So that’s why Talia’s myth exists, and that’s why we see, in the current arc, Batman essentially traveling through this older, pre-existing myth and almost being guided to find who he is going to be going forward.

I read the issue that’s coming out next week already and that was also fantastic. I’m really excited to see where this is going.

If you read that issue, it’s also taking another very popular myth, which is the temptations of Christ in the desert, and it’s using that as a narrative form, which I think is going to be interesting when people discover that’s what’s happening.

I’m also interested in sort of how when this book ends, how it all comes together and what we get at the end. So, I’m excited to see that going forward. I wanted to circle back to home, your home, my home, and the comics industry back home. Do you think we’ll ever see an improvement in terms of distribution and accessibility, because I think that’s the biggest problem in terms of comics back there.

We might. I don’t really concern myself with those questions because they’re beyond a level of interest in the business side of things. I really don’t. I have thoughts but they’re about as valuable as anybody else’s thoughts on that.

I think because reading in India is such an inherently, culturally elite hobby, even to this day — I know lots of people read. I know lots of middle-class, lower-middle class people read, but the act of going into a bookstore and buying novels and collecting them is still considered an oddity. I’m in London, and I’ll walk onto the tube and in every compartment I will find at least 10 to 11 people whose nose is buried in a book, reading.

It is not as culturally prevalent (in India) as you might think it would be, and I think until book reading becomes an activity that is accessible to every strata of society and is not a pursuit of the ‘already wise’ or the ‘seeking to be wise,’ but rather is a thing that every healthy person in society does — until that becomes the case, I don’t think we will see the level of organization or structuring required in even just publishing in India.

I can walk into a small bookstore here in London and the person who maintains that bookstore knows exactly which books are on what shelves. I can walk into a big supermarket mall, Crosswords, in India — multiple halls, bigger than any bookstore I’ve been to in a long time — and if I ask someone, “Okay, where’s this book?” they’ll reply, “I have no idea. I don’t know what shelf. I don’t know what the genres are. I don’t know whether I should put Maus in the graphic novel section or the children’s comics section.”

It’s things like that that you can’t engineer. The appreciation of art is a cultural shift. To get really into it, modern day governments, specifically right-wing governments hate people being involved in art, especially everyday people being involved in art, because art makes people question things, and people who question things are very bad for both Neo-fascistic or capitalistic societies and India, certainly for a very long time, has been teetering towards that right-wing nationalism. I guarantee you no one in that government in India is thinking, “I want 16-year-olds from every walk of life picking up a novel and reading it and understanding it.”

I think even the loss of print media, like newspapers, contributed to this. I think of back home where we had our newspapers and then we had a weekly one for teens with entertainment and we had a comic strip and that got people reading and having conversations and then a few years before COVID, and then COVID and everything sort of led that to die sort of where people don’t buy newspapers anymore. That’s also of contributed to the problem.

Yeah, I think we’re certainly heading, in some parts of society and industry, to a reversion to physical media. I saw today that Twitter had banned Yulia Navalnaya’s account for some reason, the wife of Alexei Navalny. I just look at Twitter every day and I think, “Why am I here? Why am I on here?” Every corner just feels full of idiocy and annoyance to me, and so I’ve very seriously been considering that as a whole wide scope where we shout out into the void and people hear you and hold you up was not such a great move, and maybe it’s time to return to a place of, “Cool. I’m talking to 100 people, but I’m talking about interesting things, and they’re all engaging with me and there is a conversation and there is thought, rather than just people shouting opinions and cheering for one side or the other.”

Even with a place like Twitter, it’s sort of created this parasocial relationship with creators right? I think in movies and stuff, it’s like those guys are so big where they are sort of unapproachable, but like in terms of comics-

Are they? I see movie directors every day answering random tweets from people.

True. But I mean even then, comic readers are far more approachable and that’s sort of created this parasocial relationship where you can say whatever you want. Critiquing is one thing, obviously, but being able to say whatever you want without any fear or repercussions.

To be honest, that doesn’t bother me so much because I’m good about broadcasting. I’m not on Twitter because I’m interested in other people’s opinions. I’m on Twitter because I’m interested in shouting out about my work, and so I’m very good at maintaining that perspective. There are people whose opinions I take very seriously, but they’re not necessarily on Twitter. They’re people that I have conversations with, that I engage with, that are interesting, or whose work I read. As a broadcast instrument, it’s great, and I know it can be difficult when people take social media very seriously and then you get a comment from someone and feel like you’ve been attacked by it, but my only advice for people who feel that is, don’t bother being on Twitter because you’re relying on the decency of another human being, and having been given complete anonymity.

Zee: Yeah, for sure. Speaking of other creators, what have you been reading recently, watching and listening to? What have you been up to?

Let’s start with listening because I think that’s the most interesting side of it for now. I’ve been listening to Hermanos Gutierrez. I think they’re Ecuadorian? They do this Latin road man, Old West, south-of-the-border music and it’s just fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. It has a real old school vibe to it. While certainly everything about that aesthetic is new school, it’s engineered well, digital effects, and all of that. I think it sounds great. Then I’ve been listening to Sampha, who’s a British musician. He’s a music producer and creator himself and he’s worked with a lot of big names like Kendrick Lamar. I’m listening to his personal albums and they’re fantastic. I’m using those as inspiration for something that I’ve been writing as well.

On the reading front, I just finished a novella called Come Closer by Sara Grant. I went into it quite skeptical— but about halfway through it I was thinking, “Oh, this actually is making me nervy. That’s great. I love it.” So, I read that. I think I might pick up more novellas. I read a short story collection from Brian Evanson- A Collapse of Horses. Evanson’s one of my favourite contemporary horror writers. He writes on that border between horror and weird fiction, which I really love.

On the comics front, the most recent thing I read was Hexagon Bridge and I thought that was quite interesting, from Image. I’ve only read the first issue so far. The collection that I read most recently was 20th Century Men by Deniz Camp, which I thought was great. I’m also rereading the Fourth World Compendium from DC, and the James Robinson Starman Omnibus. A lot of that is research. And a lot of that is also just me reading for pleasure and joy.

Do you read anything that’s ongoing, like you just mentioned Hexagon Bridge, but do you keep up with ongoing stuff or is that something you save for later?

I tend to pick out more things in trades, but I do occasionally pick up single issues either at a shop or online. I will mentally make a note of things that I’ve read and found interesting. For example, I read Man’s Best — Pornsak Pichetshote and Jesse Lonergan on art. I thought it was a really, really lovely issue 1, and so I’ll pick up the collection. Same thing with Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s new Helen of Wyndhorn. I got to read the first issue of that. It’s again something that I’m going to pick up the collection of. I tend to read single issues very sporadically, but I read a lot of collected trades. It’s easier for me to spread my reading out that way, because sometimes I don’t read comics, I’m reading novels and novellas, and sometimes when I’m struggling with a script, I’ll find that it’s because I have not read a comic in a long time. And then I’ll have all these collections to read in one go.

Now that I’m in university, I’ve sort of become more busy and shifting more to, “Oh, I’ll either read this when I get the collected edition or when I eventually go to the comic shop and read it physically.”

Because I grew up in India, I never had that “It’s Wednesday, let’s go to the comic shop and pick up something” mentality.

Yeah, same with Bangladesh. When I lived back there, my thing was every year my family went abroad and that’s when my brother and I bought like a bunch of collected editions. Those were our comics. Now that I’m here, I go once a month. I have my pull list, pick out everything, come back and then I’m reading them physically. Sometimes, I get my review copies, so I’ll read your Detective early, I’ll read Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man because I’m excited.

Yeah, that’s another thing that I read a single issue of.

I’ll read the digital copy and then once I get the physical, I’ll be super excited and I can sort of refresh my memory from scratch and read it, or sometimes just purely read the physical. That’s what I’ve been doing with Daniel Warren Johnson’s Transformers. Another great book. That’s my final question actually. Do you prefer physical or digital when it comes to reading?

Physical. I read digital as a matter of convenience, but anything I’m actually serious about, I have physical copies of. I think, particularly with comics, there isn’t a digital interface yet that has learned how to replicate the feeling of reading physical comics, because it is such a design-heavy medium. The first experience of reading a comic is seeing both pages at once, and you can never get that on digital. You don’t start with the spread, you always read one page and go into guided view. You look at every panel, come back out, then the first page is gone. It’s not quite the same experience of reading a comic.

When I’m reading on my monitor, for example, originally a page would show up partially and then I have to scroll down and that’s not the ideal experience because that’s the B-theory of time thing, right? You see the whole page and then you sort of read it. Now I put on 2 page view and sort of browse through. I experienced this the most with Hickman and Huddleston’s Decorum, where that book is so designed to be read physically. The digital experience sort of ruins the thing, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So that’s also why I’ve been reading physically so much because I’ve noticed now that I actively buy them, that experience is so different. And you can’t really compare no matter what.

Also the act of possessing, maintaining a physical object is a very therapeutic, important, thoughtful process and I think we’re giving up the ability to do things with our hands around the home, you know? I still have collections of things. I still have CD’s. I still have vinyls. I still have books that I maintain and keep. So, there’s definitely something to be said for having physical media and I think more people are starting to make that argument.

Sometimes I feel like a hoarder because I’m a victim of the direct market and I buy a bunch of variants. But it’s nice opening my drawer and browsing through my comics and maybe pulling something out, reading it again.

You’re buying something because it engages with you in some way, and that’s good and interesting, and we should do it. I think digital is an important tool, but only as a matter of convenience. There should always be the recognition that you’re sacrificing something when you choose not to have it.

Well, before we end this off, is there anything from your future work you’d like to tease or shout out?

I think we’ve talked about pretty much everything that’s coming up. I’m starting work on the next DC project in another month. That should be cool. It’s with Anand Radhakrishnan, who did Grafity’s Wall and Blue and Green with me. Very excited to get into that. 

Is that this year?

Ideally, yes. I’m also, starting work on my first DSTLRY book, which is doing to be with Joelle Jones. It’s going to be horror and drama. So I’m excited to get into that. My endeavor this year is to do less work, but more interesting work than I did last year. So, we’re slowly working towards that goal.

All right. Well, thank you so much. It was great! It was an honour.

It was my pleasure.

Detective Comics #1087 hit shelves last week and the third hardcover comes out this September! Rare Flavours is coming out in trade paperback on August 14th!