A few days ago at Romics we had the chance to have a chat with a very special guest, Francis Manapul, a great cartoonist and author of some stories about legendary DC heroes such as The Flash, Batman, Superman and a lot more. You don’t get to meet a professional like him everyday, so we just had to ask him something. Take a look at what he told us.
Ok, first of all we wanted to talk to you about an announcement you made some weeks ago about your first book as an author, Broken Hollow. Do you want to tell us something about you and the mysterious artist that is been with you in this adventure?
I’m sorry but I can’t say it yet. He’s working at Marvel, I am a DC artist, so we’re gonna meet somewhere in the middle. Honestly we don’t have a publisher yet. I don’t think it will be too hard to get one, but I just wanted to create without a publisher saying “do this” or “do that”. The reason why it was announced so early is because I was shooting a video for Microsoft and they asked me to show some of my Flash or Batman works, but I said “No no, let’s premier Broken Hollow”, so here it is. I am developing it with this artist, he’s a really good artist, and it’s gonna be a really fun book. It’s science fiction, but it’s something really new. We’re gonna have flying whales and all sorts of really weird stuff. The core of the story is about this little girl who has to rely on a criminal to survive in this new land that she is in. It’s very much along the vein of, I guess a futuristic version of Lone Wolf and Cub or True Grit. I’m a big fan of westerns, but my partner is into science fiction, so this is kind of a mixture between this two elements.
Where and when can we see something?
Hopefully in late 2016. It’s a little bit far away.
You started your career in Top Cow. What do you remember about that time? Do you have some funny or weird story?
When I started working there, everybody at Top Cow were super young. All of us were 19, 18, 20 years old, so since comic books were a big part of our lives, some of us had even sleeping bags under their table, so we could stay there all night. What I found fun was that we had multiple TVs and Xbox, so when most of the editorial left to go home, so around 7pm, we had this public announcement system, and since we worked in different areas, when we knew we were alone there was some guy who went to the PA system and in order to rally the troops, he sang the Halo theme song, so we knew it was Halo time! And we gathered to play together. That was fun.
So basically you’re saying you played Halo with Marc Silvestri…
Yeah! And it was so funny since, because he was Marc, everybody’s rule was “Kill Marc first and then we kill everybody else”, it was a fun time. I didn’t even go to college, so that was basically my college experience.
Who do you think is the international artist that taught you the most?
I’m a big fan of Eduardo Rizzo, he’s one of my favourite artists and his storytelling is amazing in the way he composes the page, the way he spots the blacks, he’s really good.
You’re still in Detective Comics team, right?
No, actually I quit. Yeah, that’s new.
Oh really? That’s too bad, because our next question would have been something about Batman, if we will see you working on something Batman-related.
Well actually right now you can, because Batman is in the Justice League, which I’m working on right now. So yes, you’ll see some Batman down the road.
You are a complete artist, you ink, you draw and now you started writing. How can you find the time to work on all this?
Well, luckily I’m a pretty fast artist, right now I’m also colouring my own work, so that helps. I kinda wanted to take more ownership of telling the story and I feel the pencil, the inking, the colouring, it’s all stuff you can use to tell a story. Every element is very important to me, so I felt like it was important to expand these elements, because I guess that being a well-rounded cartoonist allows me to do each of these jobs better than just focusing on one part.
How did you start working on comic books?
Oh well, when I was a kid a was only a little bit into comics, but then Image Comics came out, and Wizards Magazine was around, so it was a really exciting time for comics. At the time I lived in Scarborough, a small part of Toronto, and I also loved basketball, but growing up I realized I wouldn’t become a basketball player and so I tried with my other option: comic books. When I tried to break in that was when the industry went down, but I realized I still liked drawing and telling stories, so when I was about 16 I started building my portfolio and started working professionally when I was about 18-19 years old. The reason I’m telling this is because when I first got published I didn’t get payed for a year, so for a year I did all this work for free just to get published, and then when I was 19 I started working for Top Cow and it became a job.
You’re from Toronto, Canada. In Italy, the only Canadian comic book we know is Scott Pilgrim. How did the marketplace in Canada changed from Scott Pilgrim’s time?
It’s pretty much the same, it’s like the American Market, essentially. Actually all the American comic books are printed in Canada and then shipped in the U.S. and then shipped back to Canada. There are a lot of Canadian artists, just in Toronto we have Stuart Immonen, Ramon Perez, Adrian Alphona, we have a lot of artists and writers in the city, it almost feels like New York in the 70s where a lot of artists were living there and working for Marvel and DC. It’s pretty similar to the American market, yes.
Speaking of Marvel, is there a superhero that would you like to work on?
Right now I’m very happy at DC. And at the moment I feel that if I’m working outside of DC, I want to work on my own stuff, and that’s why I’m doing Broken Hollow. There are still a lot of characters in the DC that I haven’t got my hands on yet, so at the moment I’m still very loyal to DC. About DC I would like to say some names, but I’m really lucky because I will get to work with them in some time. I will work on Flash, which was number one on my list, and I got to do that. The second was Batman and I got to do that. The third was Superman and I sort of got to do that, when I did Superman and Batman. There’s Aquaman and Kamandi, The last boy on Earth, and I got to do both. I’m pretty lucky, I guess. But what’s interesting is that I’m working on Justice League with Geoff Johns, and we get to play with a lot of the Jack Kirby’s characters. What’s funny is that Mr. Miracle was one of the characters I’ve always wanted to do, so… It’s been a real good ride at DC, I’ve got to work to all the characters I wanted to work on.
We live in the era of the explosion of the comic book based movies. Some authors from both DC and Marvel are starting to think there are too many movies about it? What do you think about it?
As a comic book fan I don’t think there’s too many of them. There’s not enough, I want more!
Do you remember being a kid and looking at all these magazines and thinking “Wow, we’ll never see an X-Men movie”? Well now I can see an X-Men movie anytime! So I feel like I’m living in Candyland with a buffet of movies, some of them are gonna be good and some are gonna be bad, but that’s just the way it is. So, for me it’s awesome to see all these characters come to life. I’d say more!
What was your favourite one?
Maybe The Dark Knight, I think it was the best movie of the Christopher Nolan trilogy. I know it’s cheesy, but I liked Spider-Man 2 by Sam Raimi, it was a fun movie. I also liked the very first Superman movie, with Christopher Reeve.
You know, when comic book movies first came out, people were surprised by the effect, and that was enough to make them like it. Now the audience is becoming more intelligent, and they don’t just want the visual effects, but they want a good story, and that’s why I think comic book movies will be even better in the future, because there will be better stories too, and not only better effects.
Thank you for your time, it’s been a pleasure!
Thank you!
