On Wednesday, May 15, Dark Horse Comics released the first issue of a new series from writer Jai Nitz and artist Greg Smallwood called Dream Thief. On the same day, Image Comics released the first issue of a series called The Dream Merchant. Comic fans are smarter than the average bear, but two brand new books that no one knows anything about sharing similar titles seemed like a dicey proposition, so I made a point to review them both together and explain the differences. Nothing against the Nathan Edmonson/Konstantin Novasadov effort, but the Nitz/Smallwood breakthrough story – one Nitz says was originally pitched as “a supernatural-crime reverse Quantum Leap,” is the one that grabbed me, and it’s getting a strong response throughout the industry so far.
The series focuses on John Lincoln, a ne’er-do-well guy who finds himself possessed by a mysterious Australian Aboriginal mask which seems to fill him with the memories of dead spirits seeking justice against their killers. It also blacks John out in the process, so he tends to wake up confused as to where he is and why he’s surrounded by dead people. If you’re not on board yet, maybe my conversation with Mr. Nitz will whet your appetite. So, without further ado, here’s Crave Online’s exclusive interview with Jai Nitz of Dream Thief.
***
CRAVE ONLINE: I’ve been pretty taken with the first two issues of Dream Thief, and of the two ‘dream’ related series debuts that were released that day, it got the better of Dream Merchant in my view. How did Dream Thief initially come together, and were you worried at all about getting mixed up on the marketplace with the Merchant?
JAI NITZ: You’re not supposed to worry about stuff like that, but I did worry about brand/name confusion with Dream Thief and Dream Merchant. The main reason is that I had everything riding on Dream Thief #1. I was at a place personally and professionally that said, “If this one doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to try something else.”
Dream Thief came together back in 2009 when I met Greg Smallwood. We met through our local comic shop, Astrokitty Comics in Lawrence. I cold-called Greg after seeing a flyer for his Zuda project, Villain. I told him I had a pitch for him called Dream Thief and he really took to it. We put a pitch together back then and it didn’t really go anywhere. We tried again in 2012 with a renewed focus and Scott Allie at Dark Horse picked us up. Oddly, we got rejected at Vertigo in 2009 because an editor told us that Dream Thief was too similar to iZombie (what?). So similarities to other projects have always been part of the landscape.
CRAVE ONLINE: Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what else you might’ve tried if this hadn’t worked?
NITZ: I started teaching Comic Books & Film at the University of Kansas in 2012 and it went really well. It went well enough to get Washburn University interested in me and KU expanded my class for 2013. I love teaching. These kids (who are 20-24 or so) have grown up every summer of their lives with a superhero movie at the cinema multiplex. They have no hang ups about liking comics and nerd culture. That’s shocking to me. I mean, it was really hard for me to get a date as “the comic book guy” at my high school. Today? I’d be up for Homecoming King. Well, maybe not, but you get the picture. Also, comic-books-as-viable-art has come a long way in higher education, so I’d like to be on the forefront of that.
Even so, I’d never give up on creating comics. I can’t. It’s in my DNA. It’s just really hard some days. One of my pro friends told me he’d have quit comics a long time ago if it was as hard for him as it has been for me. I guess. I mean, I’ve been kicked in the teeth with some epic indignities over the years, but I still love writing comics. Even the biggest jerks in the world can’t rob me of the joy of cracking open a new issue of Dream Thief.
CRAVE ONLINE: Are there any particular indignities you’ve suffered – aside from the Vertigo rejection – that you’d like to vent about now that you’re getting some success? After all, they say sharing is caring!
NITZ: The Vertigo rejection wasn’t an indignity; that’s just the cost of doing business. They are some sharp people with a two-decade track record of putting out the best books in comics. Now, I fail to see how someone could look at Dream Thief and iZombie and think they were too similar to publish simultaneously, but that’s just me. I’m saving the greater indignities for my memoir, “Why I Finally Snapped and Climbed That Water Tower” which should be a posthumous best-seller.
CRAVE ONLINE: How has the response been so far for Dream Thief?
NITZ: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The first issue came out in May of 2013, but Greg and I had black & white mock-ups done at Morrisoncon last September. I handed them to my fellow pros there and online and asked them for quotes to help promote the book. Their quotes were very flattering. Guys like Grant Morrison, Jonathan Hickman, and Mark Waid were super-supportive and it meant a lot. The biggest thing I heard was, “I legitimately didn’t know what was going to happen next.” After I heard that a bunch I was freaked out. Did I explain things poorly? Did I drop the ball? It turns out, that’s one of the highest compliments a storyteller can give you. They know what’s going to happen next FOR A LIVING. That’s their job. So when you throw them for a loop you’ve done well. I feel like I had magicians asking, “How did you do that trick?” Critical response has been equally awesome. We got some rave reviews from places like CBR, The Onion AV club, and here at Crave. The best part is that critics are able to pick up on what Greg is doing. He’s handling ALL the art: pencils, inks, colors, letters, design. And it’s his first comic; he’s never done this before. He’s getting better with each page. I’m glad reviewers recognize that and give him the proper credit. Also, it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, so any praise is welcomed.
CRAVE ONLINE: Okay, I’m stunned to learn that Greg had never done comics work at all before, because he’s doing amazingly imaginative things on this book that you’d think would require years of experience. How did you know he was the guy you wanted on this project if he was an untested rookie?
NITZ: Greg’s eye for innovation and storytelling is unparalleled for an artist this early in his career. He’s seeing opportunities to seamlessly cram in more story on every page. He pushes me to work harder and that let’s me know we’re making the best book possible. One of the first things Greg and I did with Dream Thief was establish the look of the mask. In the original pitch had the mask come into John’s life differently than it does in issue #1, but we still had to have the mask to establish the iconography of our book and the visual shorthand. Greg drew TWENTY masks for me to review. At that moment I knew I had the right man for the job (we actually settled on a mask that wasn’t one of the twenty). From the very first images he put on paper, Greg was as committed to the story as I was. It didn’t matter that he was an untested rookie. He had more thought, insight, and talent in his right arm than anyone I’d ever met before.
CRAVE ONLINE: Is it a miniseries or an ongoing in your mind?
NITZ: I have always seen Dream Thief as an ongoing the way Hellboy is an ongoing. I want to do series of miniseries that vary in length. Not every story is going to be a five-issue arc. I want to do some one-offs and two-or-three-issue arcs. I want to keep the reader guessing and still find ways to entertain myself and Greg. Ultimately, I see Dream Thief as a sixty-issue run like Scalped or Chew. I have an ending in mind, but we have a lot of stories to tell before we get there.
CRAVE ONLINE: I subtitled my review of Dream Thief #2 “Quantum Leap, But For Murder.” Was that an influence at all, or am I reading things into it?
NITZ: No, you’re exactly right. I wanted Dream Thief to be episodic and have each issue tell a complete story. People forget there were tight fantasy/sci-fi shows like Quantum Leap and Early Edition on regular network television a few years ago. I think the spiritual godfather of Dream Thief is the short-lived NBC show Journeyman, which was a lot like Quantum Leap but a little darker. I think we’ve pushed a lot darker still. But, to show you how right you are, this is cut and pasted from the original Dream Thief pitch I sent to Scott Allie: “High Concept- A supernatural-crime reverse Quantum Leap.”
CRAVE ONLINE: I do like being right. It happens so rarely. One of the things that intrigued me about Dream Thief right off the bat is that your protagonist, John Lincoln, is something of a hard-to-like asshole. How tricky was it to find the balance between his bastardry and keeping him likable enough to want to follow him for a while?
NITZ: That was a conscious choice by me and Greg. I am unmoved by stories where the heroes are right. The Lord of the Rings trilogy doesn’t resonate with me the same way Game of Thrones does because the heroes of LOTR are morally right. They have no ambiguity. The characters of GOT are up to their eyeballs in ambiguity. I wanted John Lincoln to have more in common with the latter. The balance you talk about is key. The reader has to see themselves in his actions and be compelled to see where he lands. Most readers don’t agree with John’s actions, but they understand them. We all have a friend who drinks too much, or cheats on his girlfriend, or doesn’t contribute in a meaningful way to society, or mooches off his friends. We know that guy. We know he’s a good guy inside, but it takes some digging to get there. John is that guy. He’s worth it if you stick around, but he makes it difficult. Greg and I are still walking that fine line. I think it makes for a better comic.
CRAVE ONLINE: I also liked that he seemingly has one of the most matter-of-fact ‘discovery of superpowers’ responses I can recall seeing in comics, and mixing normality with surreality like that made both sides of the equation more interesting. Did you consciously set out to differentiate John’s experience from the more standard ‘holy shit, I can do super things!’ kind of origin stories we’ve seen before?
NITZ: Again this was a conscious choice by Greg and me. John accepts his powers and their consequences because he constantly lives with the memories of the dead. The ghosts were murdered and John feels their pain and fear and anxiety. He remembers how they died. In John’s shoes, you don’t question if the people you kill deserve to die, you know it. This truth, this cosmic understanding of Truth with a capital T, means you don’t have any doubts. You don’t have a “holy shit, I’m awesome!” moment because that moment is fueled by pain and suffering and death. John moves on coldly because, unlike the rest of us hip-deep in doubt, he’s got cosmic justice driving him. Also, he doesn’t celebrate it because deep down inside he knows the world wouldn’t believe him because he’s a loser/mooch/stoner/philanderer.
CRAVE ONLINE: In the spirit of keeping people guessing, will the mask be jumping to new and different people as well down the line, or is John in in it for the long haul?
NITZ: We are going to jump around. We don’t want Dream Thief to be a murder-of-the-month comic. We have a story to tell, and that story is John Lincoln’s story, but we’re going to do everything to keep the reader entertained and well as pushing ourselves as creators. I do not want to pull the rug out from under the reader just for sake of doing it. Greg and I have tried deliberately to keep the readers up to speed with each ghost and each past ghost every issue. After a while, it’s going to get confusing (even for me). Eventually we’re going to have a huge cast of characters who you’ve never seen, but the rock at the center will be John. We’re still going to explore the ground we set up in issue one: John, the mask, his dad, other Dream Thieves, other times, other places. It’s my hope that the fans enjoy it half as much as Greg and I do.
***
