This content material incorporates affiliate hyperlinks. While you purchase by way of these hyperlinks, we might earn an affiliate fee.
The phrases “comic book fan” and “comic book creator” might call to mind two utterly totally different archetypes, however the line separating the 2 is thinner than you would possibly assume. That is the premise behind Alex Segura’s newest homicide thriller, Alter Ego, out December 3.
The story revolves round Annie Bustamante, a single mom who made her mark in movie after being compelled out of the misogynistic, nostalgia-obsessed comedian e book trade. Then she will get a suggestion that, in fact, appears too good to be true: the prospect to not solely return to comics however to take action by reviving The Legendary Lynx, a personality she has idolized since childhood (and who’s getting a real-life comedian e book launch beginning November 12). As company secrets and techniques and Annie’s personal troubled previous threaten to derail the challenge, Annie finds herself searching a killer — who can also be searching her.
After I interviewed Segura, who’s himself each a comics fan and a comics author, he talked concerning the challenges of sustaining the correct stability between these two alter egos of his. First was portraying each creators and the businesses they work for truthfully with out both exaggerating or papering over their faults.
“I’ve been the freelancer trying to get work, but I’ve also seen how companies interact with talent and how those relationships can be great or strained,” Segura says. “I didn’t want to paint anyone as a villain, but I wanted to show it’s HARD to hustle from gig to gig and, at the same time, that companies have their own reasons for being the way they are — especially in an era when IP is king, and you’re literally one great story away from a billion-dollar industry. The problem is, you can never predict when that’s going to happen, so it becomes an endless game of hedging your bets, and that is challenging for creatives just looking to tell the best story.”
The Stack E-newsletter
Signal as much as The Stack to obtain E-book Riot Comedian’s finest posts, picked for you.
Thanks for signing up! Control your inbox.
He additionally had to withstand the urge to incorporate so many “Easter Eggs and nods to history” which may have overwhelmed readers who’re unfamiliar with comics.
“The challenge is to never let the little nods and cameos overshadow the story,” he explains. “I had to cut a lot of that, because at the end of the day, my goal is to write a great, compelling book. If a little aside takes me away from that, I knew I had to kill that particular darling.”
(He did, nonetheless, depart in a big reference to my beloved T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Brokers, which actually made this comedian e book fan very blissful!)
The blurring of identities went all the best way again to Segura’s personal days working in comics when, very like Annie, he needed to keep calm and picked up even when assembly creators he admired.
“I think I did a pretty good job of being ‘professional’ in situations that I think I would’ve flipped over as a kid or younger fan,” he says.
However, there’s nothing improper with being each a fan and a creator. If something, caring so deeply about one’s work shines by way of within the last product, resulting in a greater expertise for everybody. Segura admits to letting his interior fanboy take management a couple of occasions, like when he couldn’t resist telling legendary creators John Romita Jr. and Denny O’Neil how a lot they meant to him,” and I feel that’s okay — you let your ardour gasoline your professionalism, in the event you’re doing it proper.”