Angel : Aftermath

This man needs no introduction. If you’re a fan of Angel comics, you know who Scott Tipton is. He did a lot of work on the pre-After the Fall series, including a handful of one-shots and the well recieved miniseries, Auld Lang Syne. Recently, he’s been working on adaptations of some of the most popular episodes from the fifth season of Angel. Scott was kind enough to do an interview with me about his past work, as well as his new A Hole in the World miniseries.

BUFFYVERSE COMIC REVIEWS: To start things off, how did you first become involved with IDW?

SCOTT TIPTON: Back when it was still around, I was Associate Editor and Newswriter for Kevin Smith’s pop-culture Web site, Movie Poop Shoot.com, which was run by one Chris Ryall. When Chris got the top job at IDW, I told him that if there was anything he thought I’d be a good fit for, I’d love to talk about it. Not long after, he offered me a writing assignment, adapting a Richard Matheson short story for their late, lamented horror anthology DOOMED. He must have liked it, as he assigned me a second one not long after.

Months go by, and in the intervening time, IDW acquired the license to produce comics based on the television series ANGEL, of which I had long been a fan. Throwing caution to the winds, I mentioned to Ryall that, if anything should ever open up on an ANGEL project, I had plenty of ideas for stories. Not long after that, I get a call from him, informing me that they’re doing a second SPIKE one-shot book, and the plan was to submit three or four pitches from different writers to FOX, and let them choose, and did I have any ideas?

Absolutely, I said. Give me a day or two and I’ll send you a pitch.

About a half an hour later, my pitch for SPIKE: OLD WOUNDS was in Ryall’s e-mailbox, and I was on pins and needles. Not long after came Ryall’s response. “Hey, this is pretty strong. Do you know how it ends?”

And in my head, my inner Mister Burns rubbed his leathery hands together and went “Eeeeeeexcellent.” You see, I had remembered what Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald had told me years ago about pitching a comics proposal. According to the Gru, the key to a proposal with a chance of selling is to come up with a story that doesn’t alter the status quo of the series you’re pitching for, but makes the reader look at the character in a slightly different light from that point forward. And, he said, make sure to leave your proposal unresolved, with a strong hook. If the editor asks for more, you’re on the right track.

So off went the proposal to FOX along with the other writers’ pitches, and after what seemed like an interminable wait (but was really quite swift in the scheme of things), the news came down: my proposal had gotten the nod, and the 48-page Spike one-shot was mine!

BCR: Can you talk a little about your experiences with the SPIKE one-shot and the ANGEL ones that followed?

SCOTT: It was a great experience, but at first, it was sheer panic. After all, my previous assignments had been short stories. I had just talked myself into 48 pages. Now what am I supposed to do?

After the panic subsided, I sat down and sussed out just exactly how I was going to do this thing. Through a series of crude stick-men page breakdowns (which will never see the light of day, incidentally), I plotted out the story panel by panel and began scripting, and the work went fairly smoothly, much to my pleasant surprise.

I look back at the books now with a lot more experience under my belt, and I see all the places where I could have made it stronger, but overall, I’m pretty happy with them. I think they hold up pretty well. Fernando Goni’s style was a perfect fit for this kind of book, combining a slightly exaggerated approach to the action and storytelling with really strong likeness work. In fact, as the pages came in and I saw how well he was able to draw David Boreanaz, I decided to make my next one-shot, LOST AND FOUND, a Spike/Angel “buddy” adventure.

LOST AND FOUND was a lot of fun, since I got to play with the Spike/Angel antagonistic relationship all the way through. I also enjoyed taking advantage of the Los Angeles setting in that one, and mapping their chase sequence all through the city – That was the first time I really went out of my way to provide the artist with tons of photo reference, which I’ve done on every book ever since.

BCR: What was the pitching experience for your "Auld Lang Syne" miniseries like? Was there anything you wanted to do, but couldn’t?

SCOTT: Not remotely, no. Working on AULD LANG SYNE was a dream from start to finish. David Messina and I had only worked together once before, on a short story for the Angel Halloween special MASKS, and so this was where we really got to know each other, and I’ve been lucky enough to have been working with David practically nonstop ever since, both on STAR TREK series like KLINGONS: BLOOD WILL TELL, INTELLIGENCE GATHERING and MIRROR IMAGES, and more recent ANGEL projects like SMILE TIME.

AULD LANG SYNE was such a smooth-running machine that even David’s taking ill in the middle of it didn’t slow things down, as his then-assistant Elena Casagrande filled in so ably that I didn’t even realize the change until much later!

BCR: Where would you place "Auld Lang Syne" in the Angelverse continuity?

SCOTT: I intentionally tried to keep it vague. It could be taking place during Season 5, or at some point after the series ended. Come to think of it, it could even take place after the events of AFTER THE FALL. I think. I’ll have to go back and look at it again…

BCR: How did you and Brian Lynch collaborate with the Gunn story in "First Night"? Did you break the story together?

SCOTT: That story was Brian’s baby, make no mistake about it. When he asked me to come in and co-write one of the "First Night" stories, I was delighted (primarily because Gunn was the only Angel character I hadn’t really had the chance to tackle yet), but I had no idea it would turn out to be one of the most integral chapters. As I recall, Brian and I talked over the story, what would be happening and what he wanted to get across. I put together the first (very) rough script based on Brian’s direction and story points and then we would swap drafts back and forth until we got it to where Brian wanted it. Brian deserves the lion’s share of the credit, but there is a moment or two in that story that I brought to the table, and the fact that it appears in Brian’s masterful story arc pleases me to no end.

Click on the link :

http://buffyversecomics.blogspot.com/2009/07/exclusive-scott-tipton-interview.html