Robert Venditti (The Surrogates) interview

Recently I brought you a review of The Surrogates, a hell of a sci fi story from first-time comics writer Robert Venditti. Today I spoke with Robert on the phone from his home in Atlanta about the book, how he cracked into comics and his future plans.

Jean-Claude Van Doom – You majored in poli sci at the University of Florida, right? How did you go from that to working in comic books?

Robert Venditti – I majored in political science and English. Then I got my masters in creative writing at Central Florida. I never read comics my whole life growing up, then in grad school I had job at Borders [the bokstore]. I knew a guy who worked there who’s a big comic books fan. He kept bugging me to read stuff. I was always the snooty literature kind of guy.
He finally convinced me to read something. Astro City was the first comic book I read. I was like, Wow, that was really good. It was not at all what I expected. I, like everybody else, thought comic books were juvenile. But there were literary elements in there.

JCVD – So you started to see it as an option…

RD – I thought maybe I wanted to take a shot at writing those. I had just published one short story. I decided to change gears. My mom thought I was nuts. My wife – she was my fiance at the time – also thought I was crazy and slightly nerdy.

JCVD – Yeah, it can be a little tough to convince the significant others that comics are cool.

RD – She’s very supportive. I was going to be a high school teacher in Florida. [They had moved to Georgia] I had an application in, had gotten all my ducks in a row, we were ready to move. But I was looking for a way to get into comics.
Then Top Shelf [based in Atlanta] had an event in April 2002, their distributor went bankrupt. Top Shelf had published thousands of copies of From Hell [the film version was being released]. But the distributor went bankrupt after delivering the books to bookstores, so Top Shelf never got paid. They didn’t have the income and couldn’t pay the bills for printing the books. Chris Staros [publisher of Top Shelf] sent out an e-mail just asking if 200 fans could buy $50 worth of books, it would get them through this crisis. I got that mass e-mail and called him up and asked him if he needed any help.
I just wanted to volunteer and get to know somebody in comics. I went up there that first day and helped him pack boxes. We were just married. I told my wife this was a great opportunity. I knew [Staros] was going to be very generous with his time – a mentor. He’d be able to give me an opportunity. We just kind of decided to stay.

JCVD – So, you had some kind of official job set up with Top Shelf?

RD – No, I was just going to be a box packer. I guess Chris was enamored with my box packing skills. He had thousands of orders. They went from bankruptcy to covering bills in like 10 hours. It’s a pretty cool example of the power of the Internet.
The mass e-mail had gone up on Warren Ellis’ blog and some other places. Top Shelf got more than a thousand orders. It ended up taking about a month. I’d work full time [at another job], then on my two days off I’d go to [Staros’] house.
I’d gotten to know him pretty well. He started getting my feet wet with editing, writing jacket text, proofreading, writing press releases. I worked part time for three years, then full time for two years.

JCVD – When did you start to working on The Surrogates?

RD – It actually took me about six months to write the story. I finished the story in about December of 2002. It took awhile to get an artist. We wanted to make sure we had enough issues in the can before promoting it.

JCVD – What was the process like of creating the book?

RD – When I showed [Staros] the script for The Surrogates – knowing it was very atypical of what Top Shelf published – I told him up front, “I don’t expect you to publish it.” He read it and he really liked it and he’d always wanted to do a mainstream story. He said let’s do this one and have a lot of fun with it.
I was able to be involved and see how the book goes through the process, from production to printing to promotion. It was this happy circumstance. There I was working, working and getting paid for promoting my own book.

JCVD – How did you find Brett Weldele for the art?

RD – He was a new guy. Chris goes to Savannah College of Art and Design and does portfolio reviews for students. Brett had been a student there. Chris remembered him and thought his style would be perfect. Brett had graduated and was living in Montana.
Being a new writer in comics, it’s really hard trying to find an artist who will get on board for you. It really helped to have Chris.

JCVD – Brett’s work seemed to fit the material really well.

RD – Yeah, he does a lot of things with the photos. I really like the sketchy style – it gives a sort of iconic feel. If there were surrogates, you would want to get a bodyguard that would look like a bodyguard.

JCVD – How long did it take to get the book published?

RD – It was two and a half years until the first issue hit the stand. I come from fiction. It was difficult. [With short stories], you finish the story and it’s done. With comics, that’s the very first part of a long process. I was impatient, just because I was excited about having my book on the stands.
Brett was working on other projects and also did all the coloring and lettering himself. That took longer than the assembly line style.

JCVD – So, you’re happy with how things worked out?

RD – Oh yeah, very much so. It’s really a complete package. If I’d gone with any other publisher, they wouldn’t have let me do 32 pages per issue. They wouldn’t have let me put a fake ad on the back in the prime advertising space.
I couldn’t have been any happier. Just the response to it, to be mentioned in Entertainment Weekly, I never would’ve expected that in a million years.

JCVD – And now, you know, the pressure’s on for the next project.

RD – Exactly, what am I going to do for my sophomore slump? I just enjoy the success while I’m here. I try to just focus on that. I do have another story that I’ve finished. It’s at the first draft stage now. It’s another sci fi story, a serial killer, but not techno like the surrogates. There aren’t any robots.

JCVD – Do you typically write sci fi?

RD – I don’t have any background in sci-fi at all. The fiction I wrote was more literary fiction – short stories about families. The idea [for The Surrogates] came from a sociology book – a study of people involved in online gaming and how closely they identified with their created persona. There were people who would become depressed, and even if their persona died, they would commit suicide.
That, I thought, is the only problem with having that persona. That you had to leave it behind, but there was still this attachment. I thought, what if you were able to create this other persona but send it out to work for you?
It just seemed like such a sci-fi idea.