Director Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim 2 may have been pushed back, but that doesn’t mean that franchise is going away anytime soon! This week, Legendary Comics is following up on its popular graphic novel, Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero with a brand new miniseries entitled Pacific Rim: Tales from the Drift.
Pacific Rim screenwriter Travis Beacham provided the story for Tales from the Drift, with veteran comic writer Joshua Hale Fialkov providing the script, and Marcos Marz as the interior artist. Whilce Portacio, Pat Lee, Francis Manapul, and Livio Ramondelli are also contributing covers for the new Pacific Rim miniseries.
Recently, Crave caught up with Fialkov and spoke with him about coming on board the new Pacific Rim story; its two new leading characters, Due and Kaori; as well as giant robots and monsters!
Crave: Let’s just get this one out of the way: What’s your favorite giant robot?
Joshua Hale Fialkov: Well, I LOVE Voltron. The Big O is another old time favorite, and maybe the Gunbuster Mechs. But old school Lion Voltron is pretty hard to beat.
And your favorite giant monster?
Godzilla 4 life. Second place is King Ghidorah.
How did you get involved with the Pacific Rim comic?
I got brought in to meet with Robert Napton and David Sadove at Legendary without knowing what I was being brought in for. Before we started I told them, “If you guys want to ever do more Pacific Rim comics, I’d do ’em for free.” The two of them snickered to themselves, had me sign an NDA, and said, “So, free huh?”
Well, maybe not that “free!” Tell us more about Duc and Kaori. I think this is the first time we’ve seen a married couple piloting a Jaeger.
The whole story of Tales from the Drift is really about following their entire relationship. It’s something you don’t get to see in storytelling very often, the entirety of relationship from first meeting to well, true love. Especially when it starts with them despising each other for completely legitimate reasons. They’re completely mismatched, different language, different interests, and different personalities. And yet, they don’t just make it work, they totally kick ass.
You really put that couple through hell in the first issue. Are they going to be the leads throughout the miniseries?
Yep. They’re our stars. I really believe in the axiom that any good story is a story about someone’s worst day. This is VERY much their worst day. And if they survive the kaiju, there’s even worse things out their waiting to destroy them, too.
Will we see more of their unique courtship?
We do, yeah! So much of what makes the book work, I think, is that idea that we are all searching for our other half. That other half that makes us stronger, more powerful, just, really MORE. I think everyone feels like that, and everyone knows when they’ve found that.
What inspired the idea of putting a married couple at the center of this story?
Travis [Beacham] and Guillermo [del Toro] built the framework of the story, including the characters, but, I think my role in all of that was to find the part of the story that was most resonant with me and, hopefully with readers. And that idea, again is one that’s so universal, y’know?
I love the name “Tacit Ronin.” Where did that come from?
Tacit Ronin is actually in the movie. Just a single shot, but, that single shot is so freakin’ incredible, that I was just thrilled to get to play with it. It’s named after the design (or vice versa, I suppose) in that it has a Samurai esque physique, and with the dual blades on it’s arms, it moves and fights like dueling Samurai.
When working with Travis, how do you two collaborate on the story and script?
I started with Travis’s original story document, and then it got bounced around the Legendary teams, through Guillermo, and back to me. Usually when you work on movie related material, you don’t get access to the team the way that we did on the book. Coming from working on my own creator owned series, like Exodus: The Life After, King, and The Bunker where my artist and I hold the keys, I’ve gotten used to work for hire NOT being like that, but, honestly, the team at Legendary has been so open about collaboration it feels like working on a creator owned series.
Talk about Marcos’ art in this issue. It’s really stunning!
Marcos is incredible, and with Marcelo Maiolo coloring you’ve got something really really special. They’re a fantastic team, and I think you haven’t seen the last of them.
For the duel flashback sequences, how did you and Marcos manage to keep that clear and distinct?
Part of it is that Marcos is using charcoal pencils with more texture for the flashback stuff, so that it actually physically look different, and, then you layer Marcelo’s colors on top, and it’s something completely different for the two scenes. Like I said, the two of them together is pure comic book gold.
Which page or panel in the first issue was your favorite?
Definitely the two page splash at the top. Tacit Ronin bounding across the bay and SLASHING the Kaiju. That’s the GOOD stuff.
And finally, can you tease us with things that are going to happen in the next issue?
There’s monsters, robots, and bickering. What more can you ask for?
Pacific Rim: Tales from the Drift # 1 will be released on Wednesday, November 4.
