Interviews

Interview with John Ira Thomas and Carter Allen

By LJ Douresseau
September 6, 2004 - 10:31

We’re back on the block, baby. You been waitin’ and I been waitin to give it. So after this long time, Mr. Charlie #36 returns with a familiar friend of the column, graphic novel author and publisher, John Ira Thomas, but he’s brought a friend along, graphic designer and graphic novel artist, Carter Allen. The two men hail from Candle Light Press, where they self-publish their graphic fiction through the bookstore market and to willing comic stores.

They recently published MAN IS VOX: PAINGELS, a sequel to the well-received and trippy MAN IS VOX BARRACUDAE. I hit up Thomas and Allen for a few words about the new novel. JIT is Thomas and Carter is of course…

Would you mind giving us an introduction to PAINGELS? Also, how does it tie into the first book and is there anything readers will need to know from the first to get to Paingels?

JIT: Paingels (rhymes with "angels") is the adventure promised at the end of MIV: Barracudae when the Husband and Mr. Way stroll off into "Brave and the Bold" territory. The Beacon is in an insane asylum, Samdy is still detached from the rest of us (but, under the care of Mr. Way, she's improving), and the Mr. Way/Husband/Shotgun Bride trio is enjoying some sudden notoriety. But these things never last. There's still some fallout from the Beacon's actions coming.

It couldn't hurt to read BARRACUDAE first, since PAINGELS is a direct continuation.

Is there anything you learned from promoting BARRACUDAE that helping you to promote Paingels? Does the San Diego expo play into promoting the book and what are your plans for the Expo, if you don't mind talking about that?

JIT: We got a great response to BARRACUDAE. It has this nice friendly cover and all those dire insides. Folks are initially drawn to the varied styles incorporated into the book (something that continues in PAINGELS) and find it a challenging read. We tend to rely on good word (we try to hit a lot of reviewers) and the net to pass it on. We've yet to go to the San Diego show, actually. We tend to hover in the Midwest, but we are planning for next year. We will be at Wizard World Chicago this year, as well as the
Minnesota Fallcon.

Carter Allen, would you mind giving a brief introduction about yourself and your work to the readers?

CARTER: I was born in North Dakota and was transplanted to Iowa just about 20 years ago. I went to college for an art degree and have been working as a graphic designer since graduation. I've been at the comic thing for most of my life, but only got serious about it after college. My first effort was a book called 252-Z. It's what got the attention of John Thomas, the writer of MAN IS VOX, way back in the ol' Crop Circle days. Over the years there has been other projects, including Nikki Harris the Cybermation Witch, Major Danjer and His Platoon of Doom and Ed. The most recent stuff has been MIV: Barracudae, Dub Trub and the new MIV: Paingels.

In the first MAN IS VOX: BARRACUDAE, you shifted drawing styles several times. Did you do that in PAINGELS?

CARTER: Paingels has even more style shifts than Barracudae. The styles are a lot more pop culture influenced this time around, a lot of stuff influenced by being a child of the 70's and early 80's.

You also used different media and materials to produce the art in Barracudae; not everything was straight pen and ink. Was that a choice you arrived at with John, or was this something you decided to do while drawing the art?

CARTER: Barracudae started off as a one shot story. The 40-odd-page story was going to be a pen and ink effort, but one day, out of the blue, I decided to make it in what has since dubbed “The Barracudae Style.” I had just finished a MIV story that was watercolor and it had been rejected by a distributor for release. I figured I might as well try and something else on the next project, something that I had never tried before. I started making pages in the style and it went from there. When we expanded on the story, it was decided to do something else for the next chapter of the book. Each chapter was to have a different style from the last, a style that I concoct either based on something that John has written or something that he is writing. He mostly gives me a script and I drag it down into the basement and begin sewing together the monster that it ends up being.

What are you trying to communicate to the readers, or what do you hope they get out of Paingels?

CARTER: We really wanted to make Paingels a horror movie in it's execution. There are some terrible consequences from the events of the first Man Is Vox that the Husband, the Shotgun Bride and Mr. Way have to deal with. We push our characters into extreme situations and they don't all come out in a good way at the end. I would hope that the reader gets a good scare out of the book, or at the very least a very uneasy feeling. I want them to ask themselves "Is that what I think I just saw?" Some of the best horror out there is stuff that's implied, not spelled out for the audience. If the audience's imaginations run away with things after reading the book, I feel it's “Mission Accomplished.”

How did you pace yourself to produce a 272 page book, especially considering you have another title, DUB TRUB?

CARTER: One of the benefits of doing so many pages in so many styles is that when it's finished I don't feel like I ran one long race, but a series of sprints. I also like to mix things up as far as what I'm working on. Right now I'm at work on Dub Trub 2: The Peacemakers (to be released this winter), a book called And The Sky Turned White... for winter of 2005 and then Man Is Vox: The Other Way for the summer of 2005.

THANKS, GUYS. You can find out more about Candle Light Press at www.candlelightpress.com. PAINGELS is available through the bookstore market and at online stores like Amazon.com, or you can get it through any comic book shop that uses Cold Cut Distributors under the order code MAVOT02.

I’m back, so creators and publishers can holla at me when they want to talk. Hit the clickable name link to contact me. You can visit my missives on movies at www.negromancer.com. Love ya!

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12