Buffy : Season 8

Allie took time out of his crazy Comic Con schedule to give us some insight on his storied history with Dark Horse, and share some tidbits on their new and exciting offerings, coming up soon!

So let’s start with your background. Did you always have a passion for comics?

I didn’t start reading comics until I was around 13, and a couple of my friends had been reading comics since they were little. A friend of mine handed me a Wolverine comic drawn by Frank Miller, and it was just really exciting and really fun. It got me going and got me looking into one character after another. I was reading a lot of Marvel over the years, and then I moved over to DC when Frank did Dark Knight. And then when Frank did Sin City for Dark Horse, I ditched DC and Marvel and went over to the independents. But it’s funny that through all of that, Frank was the thread that I followed, and then that led me into all the other stuff I was reading.

I graduated from college and moved out west with very little information about what I was going to do once I got out there from Massachusetts. I picked Portland a little bit at random. I wanted to be on a cast, far away from home where the climate would change from season to season, so that ruled out California, and I wanted to be in a big enough city so that I could get a job. That meant Portland or Seattle, so from there it was kind of a coin toss. I picked Portland and didn’t know Dark Horse was there – and at the time there were no other publishers there – but I picked up the paper and started looking for a job. I actually interviewed for a coloring job at Dark Horse and didn’t get it, and then I got a job at a little literary magazine – Glimmer Train Press – and they paid me well. I was able to save money while living in a house with about three or four other people and started publishing my own comics.

When Glimmer Train let me go due to a reduction in staff, I started working freelance while focusing on my own book for five months, where I wrote and did some of the art. In those five months I got to know the people at Dark Horse through local conventions and formed relationships there. When they let go of an editor they interviewed me and didn’t hire me, but then a couple months later another editor left and hired me on. And the guy they hired instead of me the first time? He wound up going down in a ball of flames... so I was the right hire, 14 or 15 years later.

Better late than never, right?

Exactly. I started as a lower level assistant. Then Barbara Kesel was also about to leave. She was the editor on Hellboy, which she got started with (Mike) Mignola, and she chose to give Hellboy to me.

That’s a pretty big franchise to get started with.

It was a big deal, yeah. At the time it wasn’t really a franchise – it was one comic, there was no movies, no talk of any movies, no spin-off comics...

Even so, in the world of comics-

Yeah, it was a big deal. It was an award-winning book already, and only one mini-series came out, so I was the editor of the trade paperback when it came out. And then we started working on the next stuff. Mignola and I hit it off so well that we became friends right away and kept working together. Working with him was a big part of me moving up the rungs at Dark Horse and getting involved with more and more of our top creators.

I realize days may not be typical from one to the other, but take me through what a day of work is like for you.

Every day there’s a phone call with Mignola that lasts and hour to an hour and a half. It’s always been that way, even when we’ve done very few projects, but now we’ve got three or four things going at a time. So it’s very easy to fill up an hour, hour and a half talking about everything we have going on. That usually happens early so I can set up my day from what happens on that call. Not as frequently, there’s conversations with Joss Whedon or Gerard Way on what we’re doing with their books. I have to delegate a lot of what I do these days. I work with a team of three editors that work directly with me on my main books, and I’m involved with a few other editors on their books. So it’s a lot of sitting and talking to other editors and doling out responsibilities.

I used to be on the phone all the time – I’m on it less, which I’m happy about, but now I’m relying on e-mail more, which I’m less happy about. But the best days for me are when I’m sitting and dealing with the art and the script. I love when I get a script in and I really have to concentrate on that. I usually get out of the office and go to a coffee shop to really focus so I can write up my notes. And then I get layouts and pencils and compare that to the script and make sure it’s all working. That’s my favorite part of the job still. Even more than talking through it with my creators. Sometimes my job has me in endless meetings.

Which, for a creative, is kind of a brain suck.

It is, but I like being involved in that because I’m so concerned about the fate of my books that in the days when I wasn’t involved in those meetings, it felt like I was just throwing stuff down a hole. I was pouring everything I had in my books, but then I didn’t have any say in what happened to them. So I really like being involved in that level. But I like working at a company like Dark Horse where I have experts who handle every little bit of it, yet to be disconnected from every little bit of it is disconcerting. So I have a good balance.

Which book do you feel the most emotionally connected to?

Hellboy.

Because it was your first?

And because of what I’ve seen it do over the years, what it means to the industry, the history of comics... if I could’ve created a book to do, Hellboy would’ve been it. Hellboy does so much of what I wish comics did more of. Hellboy just succeeds on every creative level for me. Not to say that it’s better than other books, but just in terms of books that I would want to read, write and spend time with... me, personally, I connect with that book so much. And I owe a big debt to Mignola. The involvement in his stuff has just been such a big part of the advancement of my career, and working with him made other creators want to work with me because of how they feel about him. People look up to him so much that being an editor gave me enough of a cache that it helped me build a rep in this industry.

When you’re in a more creative mode and you’re dealing with the more artistic side of your job, and you have that kind of connection to a book, character or storyline, do you find it hard to pull yourself back from that and let go of it when it’s time to let go, and if so, what’s your process in doing that?

I think for five or six years that was hard, but one thing about me is I always try to have a lot of projects to work on, which has forced me to learn how to let go and delegate. Delegating was impossible for me for a long time, but I’ve really learned how to do it. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust people, I just – by nature – didn’t want to do it. The way I look at it now is you hold on to the things that you’re uniquely qualified for, and whatever you’re not uniquely qualified for, if you have the right back-up, you let them do the stuff that’s at the top of their ability. As far as letting go, I’ve always been really aware of deadlines. And if you care about them, you’re forced to move on.

Tell me about your favorite storylines in each of the books. What are some of the ones over the years that stand out to you the most and make you feel like, "That’s the epitome of the creation?"

It’s so far from objective, but what I would say isn’t necessarily what the reader would respond to, or even what I would respond to as a reader. But the ones that stick with me the most are the ones that surprise us at some point. Like, Wake the Devil will always be a big one for me. Mignola and I had done a couple of shorter Hellboy projects together, and then we did that, the second big mini-series. It was an incredible story, I loved everything about it, and nobody was doing gothic horror the way Mignola would do it. And not this sappy vampire romance stuff, but real gothic horror in the old tradition. And then he comes to the fourth of five issues, and I said, "Where does it go from here?"

The great thing about talking with Mike is he writes the comic on the phone, basically, where we talk through the story over and over again. But as we talk about it it’s evolving and we’re refining, and I’m his audience. The feedback he’s getting from me helps him change it, and if he says it out loud and he doesn’t love it, it’ll be different tomorrow. So with that, the end was super anti-climactic, and we started talking about what the end needed to be. And the whole thing about Hellboy being the beast of the apocalypse was born out of the need to have a good ending to Devil. And things happened that completely defined what the series is about and what it feels like to read it because in the process we needed a stronger ending.

Let’s talk about the new stuff. What’s going on?

Focusing in on the Joss world for a second, we’re going to be doing a Dr. Horrible one-shot. So far Dr. Horrible has been limited to web comics on MySpace, but the plan is to do a bunch of short stories, then get a comic of some sort out. The one-shot is coming out in November. Zack Whedon is doing it – we’re loving working with him, and we’re going to be doing more with him away from Joss’ stuff. We want to do a lot with him – he’s amazing. Too good for TV!

We’ve been talking for a while about a Serenity three-shoot series that tells the story of Shepherd Book, the Ron Glass character. Another thing we’ve been cooking on the side is when Patton Oswald did his bit on Dollhouse, he pitched Joss a couple of ideas for Serenity one-shots. They decided on one, and I believe Patton wrote a treatment that he gave to Joss. Joss read it, they’re kicking it back and forth, and so we’re going to be having a Serenity one-shot from Patton. He loves comics and has written for them before, but nothing like this. Because of the subject matter it’ll be a little bit light, but it’s the straightest thing anyone has ever seen from him. We’re doing a Willow one-shot that the artist from Fray is drawing, and Joss is co-writing it. And I met Felicia Day at dinner with Joss and watched The Guild, and I thought it would make a great comic. So now we’re going to be doing a Guild comic that Felicia will write. We haven’t picked an artist yet because it’s a very fresh deal. I love The Guild. It’s a unique and amazing thing.

We’re also doing a Cabin in the Woods comic that Joss is going to participate in, but he’s not going to write it himself. Drew Goddard is going to participate in it too. It’ll be done to follow the film, but the film needs to be spoiler proof. We’re also announcing a new comic from Gerard Way called Killjoy that he’s writing with an old friend of his. Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden did a novel a few years ago called Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier about this world war one-era hero that battles all these vampires and monsters. The novel picks him up at the end of his career and looks back on it a little bit, but we’re going to do a series that Mike and Chris are going to delve more deeply into that back story. We’re going to be doing a lot more Hellboy, too, but Baltimore will be the first major thing we’re doing with him that’s unrelated to the Hellboy line. And we’re working on a new Solomon Kane series, too.

When you travel, what’s your favorite city to travel to and why?

When I travel for work it’s different, but when I travel on my own, small towns. My favorite place recently was a small town called Wheatland, Wyoming. For my 40th birthday I went on a solo road trip through the North and Northwest, down through Nevada and wound up in Wyoming. I spent two nights in this town. It has maybe 900 people, and it was great. I try to hit places I’ve never hit before. But in terms of travel for work, my favorite place is New York. When you travel for work you’re going for big cities, and the biggest and best is New York. Portland is great for livability – nobody is competing with them for that, as far as I can tell. But stick me in the middle of the city in New York, and going anywhere there is an experience. The people are amazing. Walking down the street, eating a piece of pizza... that’s the best way to do a city.